Business Model for Mobile Payment in China

Abstract

Despite the predicted success of mobile payment, the market remains immature in most countries. Major concerns are the relationship between push and pull technologies, and the role of platforms, service innovation, power and control in ecosystems. As the first step in their mixed-method research approach, using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a research approach and the STOF business model as a research framework, the authors aim to identify design issues for m-payment services from mobile network operators' perspectives. Furthermore, the authors compare insights from semi-structured interviews with experts in the field to the empirical findings, to assess how the actual business model of Chinese m-payment services can be improved based on design issues derived from the business model. The results show that components such as building customer trust on payment services, innovative payment experience, and extend market to new segments, guarantee security and privacy issues, user profile management, and hardware problems involving existing infrastructure, customer/merchant relationship, platform interoperability, and cost saving on fraud detection need to be improved to enhance the potential of m-payment, supported by a viable and sustainable business model. There is also a role for policy and regulation to be played.