Exploring consumer adoption of mobile payments - A qualitative study

This paper examines consumer adoption of a new electronic payment service, mobile payments. The empirical data for the explorative study was collected by establishing six focus group sessions. The results suggest that the relative advantages of mobile payments include time and place independence, availability, possibilities for remote purchases, and queue avoidance. The interviewees found mobile payments to be mostly compatible with digital content and service purchases and to complement small value cash payments. Interestingly, the findings suggest that the relative advantages of mobile payments depend on certain situational factors such as lack of other payment methods or urgency. There are, however, several barriers to the adoption of mobile payments, including premium pricing of the payments, complexity of payment procedures, a lack of widespread merchant acceptance, and perceived risks.