Enablers and Inhibitors of Merchant Adoption of Mobile Payments

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.