Kalle Lyytinen, Yves Pigneur and I have been working on trying to understand why mobile payments fail in Switzerland. We looked at three Swiss case studies that failed at different stages. The objective was to unveil the main reasons of failures and try to propose several factors of success for future initiatives.

As it is essential to look at mobile payments with a multi-perspective approach, we selected three frameworks to analyze the cases. These frameworks supported a structured analysis using economic, strategic, and resource-based perspectives.

This research is still in progress as we need to study more relevant cases in order to uncover some potential patterns that lead to success or failure. We will probably look at other countries that have had other experiences with mobile payments (e.g., Japan, Korea, or Austria).

The paper was accepted for presentation at the 42st Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS) on the Big Island from the 5th to the 8th of January 2009. The paper will be published in the conference proceedings available in the Digital Library of IEEE Computer Society.

If you are interested to read this paper, here is a draft version: Download PDF

Date: October 6th, 2008 17:30-19:00
Location: EPFL (Lausanne), BC440 Cafeteria BC

I was invited to prepare a talk. Unfortunately, I am not able to come as I have some teaching obligations in ESSEC. Prof. Yves Pigneur will present some of the research we have been working on lately.

From the list of speakers and participants, the event already promises to be successful. I wish I could be part of it.

For more information, visit Mobile Monday Switzerland’s website at: http://www.mobilemonday.ch/

Niina Mallat and Tomi Dalhberg from Helsinki School of Economics, Agnieska Zmijewska from University of Technology, Sydney, and I decided to review research published in major publisher databases and international conferences (criteria of inclusion are described in our paper). We selected 73 academic papers, which we classified using the framework below.

In summary, we found that most research has focused on consumers and technological aspects of mobile payments. Interestingly there are still many issues that were quite unexplored. This should encourage researchers to continue doing and diversifying academic work in this field.

Our paper might be useful for people who are doing or want to start research in mobile payments. A literature review is always handy when looking for references and previous research.

A first version of the paper has been presented at the Helsinki Mobility Roundtable in June 2006. Later, an extended and improved version was submitted to the journal Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.

A special section “Research Advances for the Mobile Payments Arena” (Summer 2008) was edited by S. Karnouskos, R.J. Kauffman, E. Lawrence and K. Pousttchi. Five other papers were also published in this issue.

If you have any comments or questions about our paper or the topic, feel free to contact me.

To download a draft of the paper: PDF
If you have access to Science Direct (original paper): PDF

Note: Here is the citation of the paper:
Tomi Dahlberg, Niina Mallat, Jan Ondrus & Agnieska Zmijewska, “Past, present and future of mobile payments research: A literature review”. Electronic Commerce Research and Applications,Volume 7, Issue 2, Summer 2008, Pages 165-181, 2008.

Under the name of Motorola Sparrow, the designer Rinat Aruh pushes the concept of mobile point of sale (MPOS) a little further. The mobile phone is not only used for voice calls and traditional services. It combines a scanner, a point of sale system, and a credit card reader…. all of this with a touchscreen and touch-sensitive areas to access functionalities.

This RFID-enabled mobile phone aims at enhancing the purchasing experience of consumers in retail stores. Instead of queuing to pay, the device can be used to check out without going to the cash register. In other words, consumers will scan and pay their goods just with interacting with the Sparrow.

For sure, this concept is very attractive. But… Wait a minute. Would consumers buy a dedicated device just for enhancing their purchase experience in a retail store? Probably not…

Nevertheless, this concept is going in the right direction. Lots of experts see mobile phones becoming payment terminals. A good design should improve the convenience of payments… and not the opposite. Sparrow’s simplicity supports this objective.

Source: Yanko

The second paper is an improved version, which was accepted for publication in the journal: Information Systems and E-Business Management (Springer)

Title:
Near Field Communication: an assessment for future payment systems
Abstract:
In this paper, we present an assessment of Near Field Communication (NFC) in the context of a payment market. During these past years, we have been witnessing a number of mobile payment trials based on NFC. Early experiences are already quite encouraging and many expect NFC to become a highly efcient and effective technology for mobile payments. The ob jective of our research is to evaluate in a systematic manner the potential of NFC as an upcoming technology for mobile payments. In order to ensure the rigor of our research, we used a formal and structured approach based on multi-actor multi-criteria methods. Our research provides one of the first assessment of NFC and a realistic picture of the current Swiss situation as we involved numerous mobile payment experts. Our findings show that Swiss industry experts are quite enthusiastic about the future of NFC.
Download: Draft PDF, Springer PDF

How to synchronize all my working files between my computers?

I have a MacBook Pro at work and an iMac at home. To share my files between the two computers, I used my iDisk of the Apple MobileMe service (formerly known as .Mac). This solution worked ok, even though I had several problems with the synchronization between the local and remote iDisk.

As I recently got a Tablet PC (HP Compaq 2710p) running Windows XP, I wanted to find a good way to sync three machines. I could continue to use my iDisk. However, it wasn’t convenient to mount the iDisk drive on Windows XP.

After some browsing on the very good Lifehacker website, I found and tested a service called SugarSync. I was amazed by its simplicity and reliability. Since they offer a 45-days trial, I started to use the service. It gave me entire satisfaction for my needs (sync, backup, web and iphone access). I decided to pay the little amount of $24.99/per year (for 10GB of storage). Usually, I try to use free online service. However, I did not find any tools with the same quality as SugarSync at that point of time.

Furthermore, both famous technology columnists David Pogue (New York Times) and Walter Mossberg (Wall Street Journal) reviewed SugarSync and also found it to be a great synchronization service.

Here below is the video of the review of Mossberg. It will give you more details of about SugarSync if you want to use it.

It is quite interesting that our research is pointing to the same direction. One hypothesis of potential disruption we study is a sliding from card-based to phone-based payment systems. Our latest data show that industry experts evaluate NFC as a very good technology alternative for payment systems. We are currently working on a paper exposing these last results. I will post it on the blog once it is ready.

Is this a real sign of a technology disruption or again just a hype relayed by analysts and industry experts?

Looking at the NTT DoCoMo experience in Japan, the technology and business case issues have been solved by combining suitable technologies and good business partners. NFC itself is not sufficient to create the perfect solution. There is a real need to involve the right companies (e.g. transit companies and large retailers) to ensure numerous point of acceptance and a good customer base. The volume of transaction is also key. Therefore, these payment systems should be first deployed in “transaction-intensive” industries. Once the consumers get used to mobile payments for daily financial transactions, the real migration from cards to mobile phones could start. Might take some time though …

NFC news on PaymentsNews.com

JCB has announced it s working together with “seven world-class players in payment systems, terminals, NFC and mobile technology” to launch a pilot project using an NFC contactless credit payment scheme this autumn in Amsterdam.

Read more Payments News