No abstract

Merchant adoption of mobile payments is facilitating new business models and changing the way merchants run their brick and mortar businesses. Despite the advantages of mobile payment adoption to the merchant, they still hesitate to adopt mobile payments. Thus, the study seeks to explore qualitatively through a case study the enablers and inhibitors to merchant adoption of mobile payments. The study identified that merchants are adopting mobile payments to facilitate new business models, to promote the disintermediation of traditional intermediaries, to offer different possibilities of growing their businesses, and to reduce transaction costs. Even though merchants believe that mobile payments adoption and use improve operational efficiency to their businesses, there are instances of fraud, particularly in the peer-to-peer transfer sector, data breaches, data security, and privacy concerns. Therefore, it is imperative for service providers of mobile payments to enhance technological issues regarding privacy protection that could enhance trust towards mobile payment adoption.

Merchant adoption of mobile payments is facilitating new business models and changing the way merchants run their brick and mortar businesses. Despite the advantages of mobile payment adoption to the merchant, they still hesitate to adopt mobile payments. Thus, the study seeks to explore qualitatively through a case study the enablers and inhibitors to merchant adoption of mobile payments. The study identified that merchants are adopting mobile payments to facilitate new business models, to promote the disintermediation of traditional intermediaries, to offer different possibilities of growing their businesses, and to reduce transaction costs. Even though merchants believe that mobile payments adoption and use improve operational efficiency to their businesses, there are instances of fraud, particularly in the peer-to-peer transfer sector, data breaches, data security, and privacy concerns. Therefore, it is imperative for service providers of mobile payments to enhance technological issues regarding privacy protection that could enhance trust towards mobile payment adoption.

This explorative study uses the affordance theory to offer an in-depth understanding of how mobile payment affordances are unconventionally facilitating the rise of end-user entrepreneurs, and to explore why these end-user entrepreneurs expand and commercialize their creative ideas. Qualitatively, the researchers interviewed 20 end-user entrepreneurs in eight merchant firms. The data suggest that six significant affordances may serve as motivating factors for the merchant to switch to end-user entrepreneurship. These affordances are the following: i) incorporating informal peer-to-peer business approach; ii) frequent and small transactions settling; iii) greater flexibility in service delivery; iv) new business model development; v) informal finance networks; and vi) financial affordance. Employing a developing economy perspective with a particular focus on Ghana, this paper contributes to both the mobile payment research and end-user entrepreneurial studies, extending the existing knowledge in the area and providing interesting opportunities for future studies.