Study of Mobile Payment Services in India : Distribution of the roles, responsibilities and attitudes amongst actors of the payment systems

Abstract: Information technology and payment systems have witnessed the introduction, acceptance and wide scale deployment of electronic payment systems. The payment system ecosystem has now witnessed the introduction of mobile payment systems and their associated services. Major actors involved in mobile payment systems include telecom operators, banks, merchants and consumers. They need to aggregate their resources and develop a coherent ecosystem which would help the individual actors while also benefiting the overall mobile payment ecosystem. Financial institutions and mobile carriers are becoming increasingly interested and have started collaborating in order to provide mobile payment capabilities which would pave the way for the migration of payment systems from card-based to phone-based. In a developing country like India, mobile payment systems have experienced rapid growth, deployment and acceptance in a very short span of time. However, these systems are still far from mature and need to be customized and refined further in order to replace or equal the deployment and acceptance of electronic payment systems. Mobile payment services are primarily centered on the unbanked population but also consider the existing population with active bank accounts especially in developing countries.   The thesis describes the rapid growth and development of payment systems in India and how there has been a slow shift from e-payment systems to m-payment systems. The key mobile payment systems described in the thesis includes but not limited to, the Nokia money, and Airtel money. The key findings of the thesis have been supplemented with SWOT analysis, ARA model analysis and Ansoff matrix models of the mobile payment systems in the Indian market. The business models described in the thesis have been analyzed by considering a few key factors and analysis results depicted that the biggest challenge of deploying mobile payment systems is initiated by uncertainties in the environment which result in lack of Acceptance Network, Interoperability and Accessibility for everyone in society (Including educated and un-educated).