Investigating failure to implement contactless payments: a case of Near Field Communication payment systems in South Africa

Near Field Communication (NFC) contactless payment systems are being touted as the future for retail payments and public transport fare-collection systems. Studies have shown that such initiatives require many organisations from different industries to work together for the goal to be realised. The effort and collaboration required to achieve this goal cannot be underestimated. The aim of this research is to explore the failure of NFC contactless payment system implementations. The Actor Network Theory (ANT) has been shown as appropriate for investigating IT implementation failures, and so serves as a study lens for this investigation. A case study research strategy was used in the research to gain an understanding of the as-lived experiences of the actors involved in an NFC payment system implementation. The data was collected using different methods such as interviews and review of project documents. Thematic analysis techniques were used to trace and unpack the interactions occurring around implementation of these NFC payment systems and the challenges encountered. The key factors identified as leading to the NFC payment system implementation failure are external dependencies, lack of required financial investments, interoperability issues due to new and legacy systems, and lack of clear governance structures and bodies. The results of the study suggest that, when there is external dependence, but the tasks, resources required, actors' capabilities, workloads and the duration for completing these tasks are not known, then there will be frequent conflicts, leading to NFC payment system implementation failure. Regulatory bodies and clear leadership structures in collaborative NFC payment system implementation were found to be crucial. The results of the study also propose that when new and legacy systems from multiple actors are to be integrated to develop an NFC payment platform, there is likely going to be system interoperability issues due to the numerous vendors involved, which lead to failure. In addition, unwillingness to commit to the required capital investments by stakeholders was identified as leading to the failure of the NFC payment system implementation. A prescriptive framework is developed based on these lessons that could aid in ensuring better outcomes in future NFC payment systems implementations

Understanding Perceived Value of Mobile Payments: A Qualitative Study

Mobile payment (MP) applications have long been deemed as a disrupting innovation within the payments landscape given the massive take up of smartphones worldwide. However, realizing such potential can only be achieved through a deep understanding of how consumers perceive value in such innovation. This study employed the perceived value theory to provide an in-depth interpretation of the different determinants of MP value as perceived by current and prospective consumers. A total of 23 interviews have been conducted with both adopters and nonadopters. The findings suggest that the convenience value of MP represents the major value-adding factor for adopters whereas the use of existing contactless card-based payment method represented the main benchmark with which nonadopters negatively valued contactless mobile-based payment methods. These findings provide a profound understanding of the perceived value theory within the context of MP and offer suggestions to MP applications providers

Understanding the corpus of mobile payment services research: an analysis of the literature using co-citation analysis and social network analysis

Mobile Payment Services have advanced in the last two decades, gaining the attention of experts and researchers from around the world. A number of reviews and literature analysis studies have been carried out, aimed at analysing the numerous dimensions of mobile payment services; however, no researcher has attempted a co-citation analysis to scrutinise and comprehend the core knowledge structures that are integral parts of mobile payment services studies. Therefore, in order to fill this research gap, this research article aims to interpret the corpus of mobile payment services research, which was published during the period of 1997 to June 2017. Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods were employed to formulate the core intellectual structure of research targeting mobile payment services. The Web of Knowledge (WoK) database was the key source from where 406 articles and 3,424 citations were obtained. These documents were analysed using co-citation analysis. UCINET was used to enlist the keynote research papers in the realm of mobile payment services as per factor analysis, citation and co-citation analysis, multidimensional scaling and centrality measurement. Seven core clusters of mobile payment services research emerged as a critical finding of this study; these clusters include (1) Adoption and usage; (2) Trust, risk and security; (3) Application; (4) Scheme; (5) Protocol; (6) Architecture; (7) Mobile payment corporation. The findings of this research study provide crucial guidelines for practitioners and researchers involved in this field.Mobile Payment Services have advanced in the last two decades, gaining the attention of experts and researchers from around the world. A number of reviews and literature analysis studies have been carried out, aimed at analysing the numerous dimensions of mobile payment services; however, no researcher has attempted a co-citation analysis to scrutinise and comprehend the core knowledge structures that are integral parts of mobile payment services studies. Therefore, in order to fill this research gap, this research article aims to interpret the corpus of mobile payment services research, which was published during the period of 1997 to June 2017. Bibliometric and Social Network Analysis (SNA) methods were employed to formulate the core intellectual structure of research targeting mobile payment services. The Web of Knowledge (WoK) database was the key source from where 406 articles and 3,424 citations were obtained. These documents were analysed using co-citation analysis. UCINET was used to enlist the keynote research papers in the realm of mobile payment services as per factor analysis, citation and co-citation analysis, multidimensional scaling and centrality measurement. Seven core clusters of mobile payment services research emerged as a critical finding of this study; these clusters include (1) Adoption and usage; (2) Trust, risk and security; (3) Application; (4) Scheme; (5) Protocol; (6) Architecture; (7) Mobile payment corporation. The findings of this research study provide crucial guidelines for practitioners and researchers involved in this field

Strategies of Entrepreneurial Companies within the Mobile NFC Business Ecosystem

Mobile NFC technology has been considered one of the key trends over the last two years. However, very few commercial and successful deployments have happened since its appearance. Furthermore, the major initiatives have been driven for large players such as Mobile Network Operators and Banking Institutions resulting in a dominant position of well-established and large companies. A Business Ecosystem (BE) is a network compound of both established companies and new ventures with a common goal. Thus, the purpose of this study was twofold – firstly to understand the structure, evolution, dynamics and health of the Mobile NFC ecosystem and secondly, to explore how Entrepreneurial Companies (ECs) face such a broad system from a strategic point of view. This was accomplished by developing a theoretical framework constructed from two main fields of research, i.e. Business Ecosystem and Strategic Entrepreneurship. A multiple and holistic case study was conducted and data collected was based on interviews with Founders, Vice Presidents and CEOs of five different ECs – all of which perform NFC activities in the Nordic/Norwegian market. The analysis was focused mainly on the Norwegian context but it was also necessary to refer to the Nordic and Global context due to early stage of development. The findings are consistent with prior literature, in the Norwegian Mobile NFC Ecosystem, ECs are defining their strategies based on the broader ecosystem. A platform leader (keystone) strategy was identified in order to build the infrastructure, enhance and facilitate the growth and productivity of the network and likewise, there was identification of the presence of several niche players – each with the purpose of exploiting specific opportunities and strategies that contribute not only to their own performance, but to the overall health of the ecosystem

Mobile payment as a multi-sided platform : Success factors and IT governance practices

The aim of this research was to discover factors that lead to mobile payment platform’s success in the Finnish market. Mobile payment research has been ongoing for the past 20 years but no solution has made a clear breakthrough. Research has focused on technological factors, factors concerning consumers and adoption of mobile payment solutions and the majority has been exploratory, early research. Because of the rise of mobile technology and popularity of mobile content, flexible use of mobile phones and growing amount of non-cash transactions is a turning point now possible for mobile payment solutions. Along the success factors this research aimed to consider governance practices and to examine the perceived roles of the ecosystem participants. This is a qualitative study based on a case, MobilePay, a mobile payment platform provided by Danske Bank. Eleven semi-structured interviews (conducted in January 2017) with mobile payment ecosystem participants, industry experts, served as the research data, along with literature and publicly available information. The importance of nine success factors (choice of technology, choice of features, size of the ecosystem and openness, security, service pricing, reliable platform provider, guidance, training and support, successful implementation of service changes and sales and marketing of the platform) was evaluated. Because IT governance has been considered successful in the field of IT, two structures, three processes and three relational mechanisms were chosen to be evaluated to see their suitability in a mobile payment ecosystem. To create a better picture of the ecosystem, the perceived roles and responsibilities of the ecosystem participants were examined. All nine success factors were considered greatly significant for the success of a mobile payment platform. The successful implementation of service changes, the choice of technology and marketing of the platform were seen as the most important factors. User support was perceived the least important. Four success factors, user experience, ease of implementation, ability to use in all channels and loose competition and authoritative control, were added by the interviewees. Both cooperation between the ecosystem participants and clearly defined roles and responsibilities were perceived as critical for success. Solutions should also be based on existing standards. Identified contact persons in the participants’ organizations and a defined development plan were considered well-suitable for governing the mobile payment ecosystem

The role of telecommunication companies in Internet of things

Dissertation presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementInternet of Things is pervading the enterprise and consumer worlds. This technological concept is leading towards pervasive connectivity and encompasses everything connected to the Internet, being used for defining objects that ‘talk’ with one another. As stated by many reports, it is expected to generate a huge amount of added value through applications and the resulting services. Telecommunication companies with their central role, and their well established ability to connect millions of devices, are in a distinctive situation brought by the opportunity of new revenue streams and new challenges resulting from this revolution of connectivity. Their share of the added value market that is generated by the IoT is going to be dependent on the role they are going to play in the value chain. The purpose of this work is to investigate the impact Internet of Things will have on the telecommunications industry and to identify and analyse the possible directions for telecommunication companies as they take their role in IoT. In addition the IoT value chain is examined, possible business models for telecommunication companies in IoT are identified, and technology and business related challanges are elaborated. Furthermore in this work, a case study on Makedonski Telekom AD is presented. Telecommunication companies, being in the process of planning and/or implementing IoT have several business models to consider. The ones that will position themselves highly on the value chain, will have to play smart in order not to focus too heavily on industry specific solutions and balance in adding highly differentiated vertical offers where feasible on one hand, and facilitate third‐party vertical solutions where differentiation is more difficult and the investment is too great on the other, so they do not underplay their hand in the connectivity and life cycle management layer

Is Fragmentation a Threat to the Success of the Internet of Things?

The current revolution in collaborating distributed things is seen as the first phase of IoT to develop various services. Such collaboration is threatened by the fragmentation found in the industry nowadays as it brings challenges stemming from the difficulty to integrate diverse technologies in system. Diverse networking technologies induce interoperability issues, hence, limiting the possibility of reusing the data to develop new services. Different aspects of handling data collection must be available to provide interoperability to the diverse objects interacting; however, such approaches are challenged as they bring substantial performance impairments in settings with the increasing number of collaborating devices/technologies.Comment: 16 pages, 2 figures, Internet of Things Journal (http://ieee-iotj.org

State of the Art, Trends and Future of Bluetooth Low Energy, Near Field Communication and Visible Light Communication in the Development of Smart Cities

The current social impact of new technologies has produced major changes in all areas of society, creating the concept of a smart city supported by an electronic infrastructure, telecommunications and information technology. This paper presents a review of Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Near Field Communication (NFC) and Visible Light Communication (VLC) and their use and influence within different areas of the development of the smart city. The document also presents a review of Big Data Solutions for the management of information and the extraction of knowledge in an environment where things are connected by an “Internet of Things” (IoT) network. Lastly, we present how these technologies can be combined together to benefit the development of the smart city

Demand Forecast of NFC Mobile Users – A Case Study of Serbian Market

Near Field Communication (NFC) is a very short-range type of radio communication that is compatible with other contactless communication technologies. It provides enormous possibilities, particularly given that it does not require any particular communication infrastructure. NFC technology has found possible application in contactless cards and mobile phone devices as a communication infrastructure which provides a platform for the development of NFC-based business services. This paper proposes a novel approach to forecasting the number of new users of NFC mobile phones based on fuzzy logic and the Norton-Bass diffusion model. The proposed approach is demonstrated through the case study