Mobile Payments - A Comparative study between European and Non-European Market

Abstract: Mobile Payments’ is a new technological mantra not only for researchers, innovators, company executives, but also for every household across the globe. True to the statement, Mobile payments are in the verge of taking a giant leap towards a cashless society. Accordingly, mobile payment services are still followed in both developed and developing countries. In the developing economies, mobile based payment services has reached a pinnacle of success in a short span of time due to the favouring conditions such as very few banked people with more mobile phone penetration etc. But in the developed markets such as Europe, USA etc., with more advanced technology and payment solutions find it difficult to reach a steady growth. In this thesis, the main objective is to find out the factors that are hindering the uptake of mobile payments in European market. This is done by comparing the Non-European market with the European one and analysing the factors for success in the developing market and this success factors are considered for the European market which can be the lessons learnt for a better uptake of mobile payments. For this, four countries are selected in each of the markets. This analysis is made by diving into two phases. In the first phase, different cases of mobile payment present in both the markets are taken and analysed. In the second phase, factors considered for influencing the success of mobile payments such as Socio-economic conditions, Technology and Hardware used, Actors involvement, Pricing, Regulatory issues and Consumer acceptance are collected, analysed for both the markets. The analysis is done for two phases and for each phase a separate framework is used. Once the analyses are done, a summary of the results are produced. Based upon the summary of both the phases, the overlying factors causing success in Non-European market are identified and explained. Then they are compared with the European market to identify where certain suitable lessons can be learnt from the developing market. The identified factors are considered as the lessons to be learnt for a big break in mobile payment industry. In the future work section, Contactless mobile payments (CMP) is explained and their future scope in mobile payment ecosystem is discussed.