Comparative Study of Mobile Payment Apps: Google Pay and PayPal using Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics

Abstract: Mobile banking is a feature bringing customer transactions to the doorstep of mobile users by sitting at home. As the demand for mobile payment applications has increased, numerous payment applications are developed throughout the world. Every payment gateway must have certain customer acceptable conditions, usability is one such condition wherein every mobile payment application must fulfill the condition of user friendly with easily understandable features to the customer. Usability is guided by certain well-defined principles, for the optimum benefit of the user. Many researchers have worked on mobile payment applications but there are limited studies on usability comparison of payment gateways. Hence, an attempt is made in the present study to understand the two applications in two different socio-cultural contexts of Indian and Swedish societies, viz., Google Pay and PayPal respectively, on usability principles. The present study is designed with the objectives to analyze and compare satisfaction on Nielsen’s heuristic principles of PayPal and Google Pay payment users, and to the understanding association between satisfaction on Nielsen’s heuristic principles and various independent variables. A survey questionnaire, called “Personal Attitude Inventory for Measurement of satisfaction on Heuristic Principles” was developed to measure the satisfaction of users on heuristic principles of Nielsen of PayPal and Google Pay users. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire are established. The questionnaire is administered to 36 subjects, 18 subjects who are using Google Pay are drawn from India, and the other 18 subjects, using PayPal, are drawn from Sweden. Student t-tests and chi-squared tests are used to analyze the data. Significant differences are not found between PayPal and Google Pay users on the overall heuristic principles of Nielsen, and also on each of the 10 heuristic principles of Nielsen. It is inferred that both PayPal and Google Pay users are comparable on all heuristic principles. Majority of the users of these payment gateways have more satisfaction on all 10 heuristic principles. Results of the study further revealed no association between socio-demographic independent variables like age, gender, and different types of users of PayPal and Google Pay and satisfaction on heuristic principles. These two payment gateways have more or less equivalent features, facilitating similar perceptions and satisfaction levels on heuristic usability principles of Swedish and Indian samples. Several views are put forth for further research.