Consumer and Merchant Adoption of Mobile Payment Solutions

As payments by mobile phones are an enabling technology, the adoption of mobile payments is believed to significantly influence the successful emergence of electronic and mobile commerce. In recent years, several mobile payment solutions have been launched, including the Mobipay in Spain, Moxmo in The Netherlands, M-pay in UK, and Pan-European SimPay. With the exception of mobile service purchases, however, consumer and merchant acceptance of these solutions has remained marginal. We discuss consumer and merchant adoption of mobile payments and suggest drivers and barriers for this adoption. We also describe potential mobile payment application areas and identify areas in which mobile payments have the highest and lowest possibility to succeed. The information is based on extensive research conducted among Finnish consumers and merchants. The relevance of the results to other markets also is considered briefly in the discussion section of this chapter.