Exploring Determinants Influencing the Intention to Use Mobile Payment Service

Introduction

The diffusion of mobile services in our daily life is due to the flexibility, interaction and efficiency they provide for the users (Balasubramanian & Sirka, 2002; Leung & Wei, 2000). In this electronic environment, companies need to recognize the ways of interacting with their customers and presenting their services. To achieve this, it requires an understanding of the driving forces (determinants) that may affect customers’ intention to use these kinds of services and their perception of the high value that results from using them (Anckar & D’Incau, 2002). To date, there is a limited extent of studies that reinforce a well built theory on the essential aspects of developing mobile commerce (Jih, 2007; Nysvenn et al., 2005a; Yang, 2005), which mobile phone and its services are considered to be the most important tools of it (Anckar & D’Incau, 2002; Mort & Drennan, 2005). Previous studies have recommended the importance of a deeper vision to get to a better understanding of the determinants that may either compel the user to use mobile services or impede this use (Rao & Troshani, 2007). The revolution that took place in the financial services sector brought about untraditional forms of transactions, such as M-payment service (Dewan & Chen, 2005; Mckechnie et al., 2005). The mobile has become an important instrument in increasing and activating financial transactions and using mobile commerce, which is defined as mobile commerce which defined as ” the use of wireless communications networking technology as the primary interaction vehicle between buyers and sellers of products or services” (Jih, 2007, p. 35). The emergence of new contexts, such as the internet and mobile commerce, create further requirements for feasible and convenient payment methods. Consequently, M-payment systems have been introduced. M-payment is an alternative payment method for goods, services, and bills/invoices. It is defined as points to direct sales through mobile devices and wireless communication technologies, these devices allow users to connect to servers, perform authentication and authorization, make M-payments, and subsequently confirm the completed transaction, the gross transaction value of payments made via mobile phone for digital and physical goods will exceed $300 billion globally by 2013 (Kim et al., 2010). M-payment has special features, which make its adoption different from other payment methods. These features are personalization, ubiquity, nonexistence of time and place constraints in the implementation of the service, inseparability from users, (Rao & Troshani, 2007) and also is lower cost in terms of time and effort compared with opening a bank account, or depending on traditional postal services. Moreover, traditional payment cards taking into consideration the possibility of tapping and viewing, stealing a card or the data it contains (Chmielarz & Nowak, 2010). In addition, M-payment is viewed as safer and more convenient than banking services because it requires neither holding nor dealing with cash money (Mallat & Tunaninen, 2008; Nina et al., 2003).