The economics of mobile payments: Understanding stakeholder issues for an emerging financial technology application

Economic theory provides a unique vantage point from which to examine issues with respect to emerging technologies, where standards and adoption, business process changes and implementation outcomes, information security, investments and business value, and industry impact require care and consideration on the part of senior management strategists and financial services leaders. In this article, we examine a new technology application which is coming into its own around the world, in association with the revolution in wireless connectivity: mobile payments. Although there are likely to be nuances and surprises with this technology application, we caution the reader to recognize that many of the same economic forces will be at work as were with other financial services and related technology applications in the past. We apply a robust evaluative framework that permits identification of the relevant stakeholders and applicable theory in the analysis of consumer, firm, business process, market, industrial and social issues. Our findings are intended to guide senior managers in dealing with the economic aspects of mobile payments, and to help identify some important directions for the research.