Determinants of Merchant Adoption Intent for Mobile Payments in Retailing: an empirical study

Emerging opportunity for mobile payments – a new form of electronic payments made using mobile handset seems to be growing rapidly and looks promising as an alternative payment instrument for conducting retail transactions. The concept behind mobile payments is generally accepted but the adoption determinants remain largely unclear. Prior research on mobile payments has mostly attempted to study the wireless technology development or consumer attitude towards use. Relatively few studies focus to explore the merchant attitude formation process and there is clearly a lack of studies focusing on the retail context. This study proposed an extended technology acceptance model augmented by additional attitudinal and control variables related to marketing orientation, provider facilitation, implementation effectiveness and organizational innovation. The proposed model was empirically tested using a quantitative survey with retail merchants based on an organizational context. The findings indicated the marketing orientation was a strong predictor for attitude toward use while the implementation effectiveness and provider facilitation positively influence the intention of use of mobile payments. In addition, the results suggested that organizational innovation which was found to significantly affect the marketing orientation and implementation effectiveness should be strengthened in order to facilitate the pace of adoption. Implications and future research were suggested.