Is mobile payment still relevant in the fintech era?

Abstract

Abstract Mobile phones have provided such an enormous opportunity for financial development, and are anticipated to become a common tool for carrying out various financial transactions. Hundreds of mobile payment services have been introduced across the globe. Strikingly, many of these efforts have failed. This study analyzes whether mobile payment is still relevant in the fintech era. I compare three mobile payment projects – Oi Paggo in Brazil, TCASH in Indonesia, and M-PESA in Kenya – as case studies. I argue that mobile payment systems currently operate in such complex and multidimensional networks with shared common infrastructures and compete for producing and providing value to the customers on the basis of these infrastructures. Three attributes of industry and network structure are immediately of interest: (1) cutting the vertical supply chain more finely may encourage large players to extend their domination, (2) the basic platform continues to be governed by multinational operators (MNOs) – telecom firms, and (3) openness may be decreasing or increasing even as the number of independent parties in the supply chain drops.