- Email: [email protected]
Guest Editorial: Research advances for the mobile payments arena
Available online at www.sciencedirect.com
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140 www.elsevier.com/locate/ecra
Preface
Guest Editorial: Research advances for the mobile payments arena
Traditional payment systems dominate the domain of electronic commerce today. However, most of them are coupled with too much overhead for the customer and a lack of security for Internet transactions. Mobile payments (m-payments), on the other hand, have been surrounded by a lot of hype since the dotcom era of the late 1990s, and although they were welcomed by some of the early adopters, not all of the key technical components – including a supportive infrastructure and stakeholder relationships – were in place to yield broad-based success in the marketplace. Now, almost a decade out from the first approaches, the domain of m-payments is advancing steadily and maturing, shedding the hype and the inappropriate and wild visions of applicability, toward a real and practical alternative for future payment infrastructures for the wireless world of e-commerce. This special issue carefully examines some of the key technical and managerial issues for this promising emerging domain. High quality wireless applications will provide access to content and ubiquitous services that can be accessed anytime, anywhere and in a much easier way than we have heretofore seen. According to an old saying related to telecommunications, nothing can be really considered as a service – unless you can charge for it. In an era where the barriers between wired and wireless applications blur, and where hand-held electronic devices are becoming ever more capable for sophisticated applications in spite of their small size, there is an increasing need for an infrastructure that will be able to effectively support real-time payments for service usage. For business efforts to truly flourish in the mobile world, trusted methods for easy, inexpensive and immediate payments should be in place. Once this is done, increased demand for mobile business services will develop, and the ‘‘snowballing’’ effect will jumpstart a new generation of mobile services and content far beyond what we have now. The need for a versatile and highly efficient payment infrastructure was identified early enough; this has never been the main issue though. We still have not witnessed the emergence of global solutions in the market that effectively address these needs. The existing approaches are
1567-4223/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2007.08.001
country-specific, and sometimes even operator-specific, so their applicability usually is constrained to specific payment scenarios and niche markets – quite far from a universally-desirable solution. Most of the approaches are not sufficiently user friendly, and they present a challenging learning curve. They also tend to appeal mostly to technology-talented early adopters rather than the average or generalist user. Apart from issues on the technical side, there have been policy and regulatory issues that also have hindered mobile payments. We have seen insufficient efforts based on cooperation between mobile network operators and financial service providers such as banks. This is surprising, since there have been repeated calls for collaborative efforts across the spectrum of mobile payments-related activities and processes. Indeed, co-opetition in imperfect markets involving real-world competition for m-payments services may be a requirement for the success of mpayments. This special issue was created with a goal of exploring some of the latest advances in the domain of mobile payments by adopting technical and managerial perspectives in current and original research. We received twenty-two submissions in total, and selected ten among them to develop further following the first round of review. The final group of six accepted papers typically went through two or three rounds of reviews (though in some cases more) to reach their present form. Our approach was developmental in nature, and typically involved three or four knowledgeable external reviewers. The special issue co-editors also filed reviews and opinions, as appropriate, and were instrumental in giving the authors guidance on how to bring out the best in their research, when we saw the promise of emerging new knowledge and innovations. We hope that this issue will provide insights into some of the leading issues related to mobile payments and offer a starting point for the interested reader. The first paper comes from Yoris A. Au and Robert J. Kauffman, who look at the emerging technology of mobile payments via the prism of the economic theory. In their article titled ‘‘The Economics of Mobile Payments: Understanding Stakeholder Issues for an Emerging Financial
138
Preface / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140
Technology Application,’’ they critically evaluate the applicability of economic perspectives on m-payments and leverage a framework that emphasizes the roles of m-payment stakeholders. The perspective that the authors offer conceptualizes stakeholders in terms of producers and consumers of m-payments services, and also the related technological innovations. They further identify business intermediaries who facilitate adoption and diffusion, and tailor industry-specific solutions that create ever-higher levels of business and social value with the technologies. They note the role of government intermediaries and other entities that reflect the varied public policy interests of regulators, citizen’s groups, and standards bodies. Their article also showcases a number of theoretical interpretations of what has happened and what is likely to happen with respect to changes in industry infrastructure, standards efforts and the efficacy of m-payments solutions, and other issues that arise with the interaction of increased use of the Internet for transaction-making relative to the range of stakeholder interests in the economy. Tomi Dahlberg, Niina Mallat, Jan Ondrus, and Agnieszka Zmijewska, in their article ‘‘Past, Present and Future of Mobile Payments Research: A Literature Review,’’ take a holistic view of the mobile payments domain by reviewing prior literature, developing a framework as a basis for analyzing the various factors that impact mobile payment services markets, and suggesting directions for future research. The framework the authors present utilizes the five forces model from Michael Porter in strategy, and other works on contingency theory in organizational studies as bases on which to classify past research and suggest questions for future research. The two areas of theory emphasize environmental forces that vary from the effects of competition to technological changes to transformations in culture, society and economy. The authors suggest that the bulk of m-payments research has focused on the technology and consumer aspects. Much less attention has been given to markets and providers, legal and regulatory issues, standards, and merchant-side issues. Their analysis offers insights on a variety of research questions, including: the demand effects on m-payments of cross-national culture and life cycle differences; the impacts of financial services market structure and telecommunications infrastructure on m-payment systems success; how standardized transaction protocols can solve the ‘‘roaming problem’’ and facilitate m-payments acceptance in support of mobile commerce; how security for mobile commerce is best effected; and how merchants and consumers can participate in the design of the most supportive business processes that incorporate m-payments. They also explore issues of inertia, based on the persistence of traditional payment methods, and what the incentives will need to be to accomplish systemic transformation in the value propositions that m-payment systems offer. They further consider the business value of m-payment services, and whether coopetition in the marketplace will be required to produce appropriate levels of social welfare. Their article is richly
conceived and offers many helpful ideas and directions for the next steps in research. Key Pousttchi contributed the next article, which is entitled ‘‘A Modeling Approach and Reference Models for the Analysis of Mobile Payment Use Case Types.’’ He proposes a mobile payment modeling approach (MPMA) that is suited for value-based analysis of mobile payment use cases. He identifies five relevant use case scenarios in the m-payments world: (1) mobile commerce services and applications; (2) business-to-consumer e-commerce on the Internet, where purchases of goods and services occur; (3) stationary merchant automats, involving a vending machine as the agent on the seller’s side; (4) stationary merchant staff, involving cashiers at the physical point of sale; and (5) money transfers on a customer-to-customer basis. His approach analyzes m-payments-related business models from the multiple perspectives of m-payments services providers, merchants who may be willing to accept m-payments in lieu of other forms of value exchange, and customers and companies like banks and mobile phone operators. It also supports the analysis of the value chain of activities where m-payments are involved, as well as a means to derive and describe the use case type. His proposed modeling tool provides a means for the representation of value exchange diagrams, which permit the depiction and further analysis of how value is created in m-payments-assisted business settings. The work offers both academic contributions for systems analysis and design in the m-payments arena, and practitioner benefits, through extensive illustrations of the approach. Andriew Lim’s article is next and is titled ‘‘InterConsortia Battles in Mobile Payments Standardization.’’ It focuses on the complexities of the standards-setting process for m-payments, and how the different parties that shape the standards do so according to their agendas. Lim shows that these individual choices have a prominent influence on the whole mobile payments domain. His analysis is accomplished through mini-cases involving past and present m-payments services providers: the Mobile Payment Forum, the Mobey Forum, Simpay, PayCircle and the European Committee for Banking Standards. His methodology involves unstructured interviews, collection of documentary evidence, and materials from public Web sites during the 2003–2005 time frame, when no clear standards winners existed or were predicted to come to positions of dominance. His research documents the importance of competition at the level of the m-payments-developing consortia, and also shows the variety of approaches the various players have been using. Other than consortia, they have included: participation in standard-setting organizations, technology-related collaboration and exchanges, and closed and open partnerships. He also explores different m-payments solutions in the form of card-based systems, wallet-based or bank account-based m-payments systems, and telecommunications company billing-based systems. The last of these has been offered in the form of use of prepaid airtime and postpaid subscriptions. He also shows the
Preface / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140
efficacy of alliances and joint ventures among m-payments service providers as a means to achieve higher negotiating power to control the direction of development that m-payments consortia take. Marko Hassinen, Konstantin Hyppo¨nen and Elena Trichina are the authors of the next article in the special issue, entitled ‘‘Utilizing National Public-Key Infrastructure in Mobile Payment Systems.’’ They focus on issues related to information security in the mobile payment domain, including authentication and non-repudiation. Authentication involves ascertaining or verifying that the digital identity of a party is true in the process of a transaction that requires it (e.g., a payment transaction made via a wireless device). Non-repudiation in the context of Internet-based and mobile phone-based financial transactions and monetary exchange implies that is it possible to verify absolutely that the recipient and sender – in other words both parties – were the actual parties who received and sent an m-payment. The authors argue that a nationwide wireless public-key infrastructure (WPKI) supported by governmental bodies can be used to tackle security issues in a mobile payment system, and that this system can be implemented using open development platforms with an overall level of performance that is adequate for enabling fast enough transactions to work well in the context of the business processes that require such support. The authors illustrate the approach they advocate with reference to the Finnish National Public Key Infrastructure (FINEID), show its application in virtual point-of-sale payments as well as contactless proximity-based payments, and discuss a proof-of-concept application for the purchase of train tickets via a mobile phone. Apostolis Kousaridas, George Parissis, and Theodore Apostolopoulos in their article titled ‘‘An Open Financial Services Architecture Based on the Use of Intelligent Mobile Devices,’’ develop, explore and analyze a proposed universal architecture that supports mobile payments and mobile banking. Their approach, called the Open Financial Services Architecture (OFSA), takes into consideration the 3G and emerging 4G communications technologies, as well as the necessity of properly handling different kinds of transactions, involving different means of payment, and information and transactional security, telecommunications, and software development. The essence of OFSA is that it supports open interfaces, and emphasizes technology and process integration, while providing significant decision support capabilities that aid in m-payment transaction-making. A subset of the components in OFSA supports mobile device and merchant device communication, security for authentication and non-repudiation, and connectivity with banking and payment services. The authors report on a partial test of their proposed m-payment system artifact, involving a virtual bank and a virtual vending machine. The interested reader should visit for additional details on the OFSA prototype.
139
Overall, this issue has offered a wealth of new knowledge and ideas that are based on a breadth of technical and managerial, modeling and theoretical, and abstract and applied modes of research. The research that we have showcased demonstrates the diversity of thinking and innovation that exists in the m-payments research arena, and the extent to which the area is likely to be shaped by truly global efforts in knowledge development. To date, Europe and Asia have been the uncontested leaders in technological innovation for m-payments, but it appears that Australia and the Americas now have sufficient interest to begin devoting the research efforts and the business investments to bring their m-payments infrastructures to a new level of development and value production for the economy. This special issue has also been helpful for the individual exchanges it has encouraged, involving person-to-person dialogues on the important issues of m-payments in a truly global context. One measure of the success of our work as editors will be how well new cooperative efforts in m-payments research are spawned, so that the new knowledge that is created flows in an increasingly swift river of intercommunication and global exchange. There are numerous opportunities for further research that have not been fully explored in this context to date. On the technical side, the rate of change with respect to digital mobile phone technologies and systems is so rapid that we should be chided in advance for making predictions that are likely to come true either all too soon (as is often the case), or that will be swamped by the unsuspected technological innovations of future markets. Clearly, the consolidation of standards will have a critical role in how the next several generations of technological innovations play out. Our expectation is that the related technologies and m-payment systems solutions will become increasing encompassing of broadly-accepted standards, so that producer and consumer uncertainty will be diminished and value-producing investments can be made in much larger measure by both sides. In addition, we expect that m-payments technology innovations will be increasingly prompted by multiple technological platforms – and not just the cell phones and other relatively simple hand-held devices of today. We expect technological convergence, via the blending of the capabilities of multiple distinct technologies today, to drive the purchase of music and video on demand, and the consumption of location-based services identifiable through hand-held mobile devices. In terms of markets and business adoption of these services, we expect m-payments to reach the level of viability in specific applications that we see associated with the use of credit cards today. M-payment-capable devices will be a future means of choice for consumer and business travelers’ procurement of travel, hospitality, rental car and entertainment services, among others. We also expect to see mobile payments services increasingly embedded into other business processes, per the future-oriented value-creation perspective presented in this special issue for use case business modeling analysis in contexts with m-payments-influenced business processes. We also envision other contexts in which
140
Preface / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140
m-payments become the key lever for the release of value to the consumer–user and the business-vendor. Locationbased e-commerce, for example, is likely to be an especially fruitful context in which further technical, managerial and strategic experience with m-payments will produce high business value. Eventually mobile payments will be fully embedded in a ubiquitous environment, as a service that will be used automatically by numerous entities (e.g., other services, devices etc.) in a way that is transparent to the end-user. In closing, the guest editors would like to thank all the authors who responded to the call for papers, regardless of whether their paper has been included in this issue. Through their cooperation with the review processes that we established for the special issue, we feel confident in presenting papers that have reached a high level of quality in terms of their research questions, their conceptualization and theoretical basis, their modeling and analysis approaches, their innovative findings, and their messages for research and practice. This has only been possible through the help of reviewers who have given the papers their best support, through developmental reviewing and constructive commentary. The special issue editors acknowledge the contributions of many experts who participated in the review process, and provided helpful suggestions to the authors on improving the content and presentation of the articles. In addition, we wish to thank the journal’s past Coordinating Editor, Norman Sadeh, for the helpful input he provided at the outset of this project. His encouragement was instrumental in helping us to get a better sense of the expected quality of the final product. We also thank the current
Co-Editor in Chief, Chris Westland, who helped out with reviews and generously offered expertise through his own extensive knowledge of electronic payments, and the financial services and e-commerce industries in Asia. Senior Researcher Stamatis Karnouskos SAP AG, SAP Research, Germany E-mail address: [email protected] Robert J. Kauffman W. P. Carey Chair in Information Systems, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States E-mail address: rkauff[email protected] Elaine Lawrence Department Chair in Computer Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia E-mail address: [email protected] Assistant Professor Key Pousttchi Head of Mobile Commerce Working Group, Business Informatics and Systems Engineering, Business School, Germany E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 11 August 2007
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140 www.elsevier.com/locate/ecra
Preface
Guest Editorial: Research advances for the mobile payments arena
Traditional payment systems dominate the domain of electronic commerce today. However, most of them are coupled with too much overhead for the customer and a lack of security for Internet transactions. Mobile payments (m-payments), on the other hand, have been surrounded by a lot of hype since the dotcom era of the late 1990s, and although they were welcomed by some of the early adopters, not all of the key technical components – including a supportive infrastructure and stakeholder relationships – were in place to yield broad-based success in the marketplace. Now, almost a decade out from the first approaches, the domain of m-payments is advancing steadily and maturing, shedding the hype and the inappropriate and wild visions of applicability, toward a real and practical alternative for future payment infrastructures for the wireless world of e-commerce. This special issue carefully examines some of the key technical and managerial issues for this promising emerging domain. High quality wireless applications will provide access to content and ubiquitous services that can be accessed anytime, anywhere and in a much easier way than we have heretofore seen. According to an old saying related to telecommunications, nothing can be really considered as a service – unless you can charge for it. In an era where the barriers between wired and wireless applications blur, and where hand-held electronic devices are becoming ever more capable for sophisticated applications in spite of their small size, there is an increasing need for an infrastructure that will be able to effectively support real-time payments for service usage. For business efforts to truly flourish in the mobile world, trusted methods for easy, inexpensive and immediate payments should be in place. Once this is done, increased demand for mobile business services will develop, and the ‘‘snowballing’’ effect will jumpstart a new generation of mobile services and content far beyond what we have now. The need for a versatile and highly efficient payment infrastructure was identified early enough; this has never been the main issue though. We still have not witnessed the emergence of global solutions in the market that effectively address these needs. The existing approaches are
1567-4223/$ - see front matter Ó 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.elerap.2007.08.001
country-specific, and sometimes even operator-specific, so their applicability usually is constrained to specific payment scenarios and niche markets – quite far from a universally-desirable solution. Most of the approaches are not sufficiently user friendly, and they present a challenging learning curve. They also tend to appeal mostly to technology-talented early adopters rather than the average or generalist user. Apart from issues on the technical side, there have been policy and regulatory issues that also have hindered mobile payments. We have seen insufficient efforts based on cooperation between mobile network operators and financial service providers such as banks. This is surprising, since there have been repeated calls for collaborative efforts across the spectrum of mobile payments-related activities and processes. Indeed, co-opetition in imperfect markets involving real-world competition for m-payments services may be a requirement for the success of mpayments. This special issue was created with a goal of exploring some of the latest advances in the domain of mobile payments by adopting technical and managerial perspectives in current and original research. We received twenty-two submissions in total, and selected ten among them to develop further following the first round of review. The final group of six accepted papers typically went through two or three rounds of reviews (though in some cases more) to reach their present form. Our approach was developmental in nature, and typically involved three or four knowledgeable external reviewers. The special issue co-editors also filed reviews and opinions, as appropriate, and were instrumental in giving the authors guidance on how to bring out the best in their research, when we saw the promise of emerging new knowledge and innovations. We hope that this issue will provide insights into some of the leading issues related to mobile payments and offer a starting point for the interested reader. The first paper comes from Yoris A. Au and Robert J. Kauffman, who look at the emerging technology of mobile payments via the prism of the economic theory. In their article titled ‘‘The Economics of Mobile Payments: Understanding Stakeholder Issues for an Emerging Financial
138
Preface / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140
Technology Application,’’ they critically evaluate the applicability of economic perspectives on m-payments and leverage a framework that emphasizes the roles of m-payment stakeholders. The perspective that the authors offer conceptualizes stakeholders in terms of producers and consumers of m-payments services, and also the related technological innovations. They further identify business intermediaries who facilitate adoption and diffusion, and tailor industry-specific solutions that create ever-higher levels of business and social value with the technologies. They note the role of government intermediaries and other entities that reflect the varied public policy interests of regulators, citizen’s groups, and standards bodies. Their article also showcases a number of theoretical interpretations of what has happened and what is likely to happen with respect to changes in industry infrastructure, standards efforts and the efficacy of m-payments solutions, and other issues that arise with the interaction of increased use of the Internet for transaction-making relative to the range of stakeholder interests in the economy. Tomi Dahlberg, Niina Mallat, Jan Ondrus, and Agnieszka Zmijewska, in their article ‘‘Past, Present and Future of Mobile Payments Research: A Literature Review,’’ take a holistic view of the mobile payments domain by reviewing prior literature, developing a framework as a basis for analyzing the various factors that impact mobile payment services markets, and suggesting directions for future research. The framework the authors present utilizes the five forces model from Michael Porter in strategy, and other works on contingency theory in organizational studies as bases on which to classify past research and suggest questions for future research. The two areas of theory emphasize environmental forces that vary from the effects of competition to technological changes to transformations in culture, society and economy. The authors suggest that the bulk of m-payments research has focused on the technology and consumer aspects. Much less attention has been given to markets and providers, legal and regulatory issues, standards, and merchant-side issues. Their analysis offers insights on a variety of research questions, including: the demand effects on m-payments of cross-national culture and life cycle differences; the impacts of financial services market structure and telecommunications infrastructure on m-payment systems success; how standardized transaction protocols can solve the ‘‘roaming problem’’ and facilitate m-payments acceptance in support of mobile commerce; how security for mobile commerce is best effected; and how merchants and consumers can participate in the design of the most supportive business processes that incorporate m-payments. They also explore issues of inertia, based on the persistence of traditional payment methods, and what the incentives will need to be to accomplish systemic transformation in the value propositions that m-payment systems offer. They further consider the business value of m-payment services, and whether coopetition in the marketplace will be required to produce appropriate levels of social welfare. Their article is richly
conceived and offers many helpful ideas and directions for the next steps in research. Key Pousttchi contributed the next article, which is entitled ‘‘A Modeling Approach and Reference Models for the Analysis of Mobile Payment Use Case Types.’’ He proposes a mobile payment modeling approach (MPMA) that is suited for value-based analysis of mobile payment use cases. He identifies five relevant use case scenarios in the m-payments world: (1) mobile commerce services and applications; (2) business-to-consumer e-commerce on the Internet, where purchases of goods and services occur; (3) stationary merchant automats, involving a vending machine as the agent on the seller’s side; (4) stationary merchant staff, involving cashiers at the physical point of sale; and (5) money transfers on a customer-to-customer basis. His approach analyzes m-payments-related business models from the multiple perspectives of m-payments services providers, merchants who may be willing to accept m-payments in lieu of other forms of value exchange, and customers and companies like banks and mobile phone operators. It also supports the analysis of the value chain of activities where m-payments are involved, as well as a means to derive and describe the use case type. His proposed modeling tool provides a means for the representation of value exchange diagrams, which permit the depiction and further analysis of how value is created in m-payments-assisted business settings. The work offers both academic contributions for systems analysis and design in the m-payments arena, and practitioner benefits, through extensive illustrations of the approach. Andriew Lim’s article is next and is titled ‘‘InterConsortia Battles in Mobile Payments Standardization.’’ It focuses on the complexities of the standards-setting process for m-payments, and how the different parties that shape the standards do so according to their agendas. Lim shows that these individual choices have a prominent influence on the whole mobile payments domain. His analysis is accomplished through mini-cases involving past and present m-payments services providers: the Mobile Payment Forum, the Mobey Forum, Simpay, PayCircle and the European Committee for Banking Standards. His methodology involves unstructured interviews, collection of documentary evidence, and materials from public Web sites during the 2003–2005 time frame, when no clear standards winners existed or were predicted to come to positions of dominance. His research documents the importance of competition at the level of the m-payments-developing consortia, and also shows the variety of approaches the various players have been using. Other than consortia, they have included: participation in standard-setting organizations, technology-related collaboration and exchanges, and closed and open partnerships. He also explores different m-payments solutions in the form of card-based systems, wallet-based or bank account-based m-payments systems, and telecommunications company billing-based systems. The last of these has been offered in the form of use of prepaid airtime and postpaid subscriptions. He also shows the
Preface / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140
efficacy of alliances and joint ventures among m-payments service providers as a means to achieve higher negotiating power to control the direction of development that m-payments consortia take. Marko Hassinen, Konstantin Hyppo¨nen and Elena Trichina are the authors of the next article in the special issue, entitled ‘‘Utilizing National Public-Key Infrastructure in Mobile Payment Systems.’’ They focus on issues related to information security in the mobile payment domain, including authentication and non-repudiation. Authentication involves ascertaining or verifying that the digital identity of a party is true in the process of a transaction that requires it (e.g., a payment transaction made via a wireless device). Non-repudiation in the context of Internet-based and mobile phone-based financial transactions and monetary exchange implies that is it possible to verify absolutely that the recipient and sender – in other words both parties – were the actual parties who received and sent an m-payment. The authors argue that a nationwide wireless public-key infrastructure (WPKI) supported by governmental bodies can be used to tackle security issues in a mobile payment system, and that this system can be implemented using open development platforms with an overall level of performance that is adequate for enabling fast enough transactions to work well in the context of the business processes that require such support. The authors illustrate the approach they advocate with reference to the Finnish National Public Key Infrastructure (FINEID), show its application in virtual point-of-sale payments as well as contactless proximity-based payments, and discuss a proof-of-concept application for the purchase of train tickets via a mobile phone. Apostolis Kousaridas, George Parissis, and Theodore Apostolopoulos in their article titled ‘‘An Open Financial Services Architecture Based on the Use of Intelligent Mobile Devices,’’ develop, explore and analyze a proposed universal architecture that supports mobile payments and mobile banking. Their approach, called the Open Financial Services Architecture (OFSA), takes into consideration the 3G and emerging 4G communications technologies, as well as the necessity of properly handling different kinds of transactions, involving different means of payment, and information and transactional security, telecommunications, and software development. The essence of OFSA is that it supports open interfaces, and emphasizes technology and process integration, while providing significant decision support capabilities that aid in m-payment transaction-making. A subset of the components in OFSA supports mobile device and merchant device communication, security for authentication and non-repudiation, and connectivity with banking and payment services. The authors report on a partial test of their proposed m-payment system artifact, involving a virtual bank and a virtual vending machine. The interested reader should visit
139
Overall, this issue has offered a wealth of new knowledge and ideas that are based on a breadth of technical and managerial, modeling and theoretical, and abstract and applied modes of research. The research that we have showcased demonstrates the diversity of thinking and innovation that exists in the m-payments research arena, and the extent to which the area is likely to be shaped by truly global efforts in knowledge development. To date, Europe and Asia have been the uncontested leaders in technological innovation for m-payments, but it appears that Australia and the Americas now have sufficient interest to begin devoting the research efforts and the business investments to bring their m-payments infrastructures to a new level of development and value production for the economy. This special issue has also been helpful for the individual exchanges it has encouraged, involving person-to-person dialogues on the important issues of m-payments in a truly global context. One measure of the success of our work as editors will be how well new cooperative efforts in m-payments research are spawned, so that the new knowledge that is created flows in an increasingly swift river of intercommunication and global exchange. There are numerous opportunities for further research that have not been fully explored in this context to date. On the technical side, the rate of change with respect to digital mobile phone technologies and systems is so rapid that we should be chided in advance for making predictions that are likely to come true either all too soon (as is often the case), or that will be swamped by the unsuspected technological innovations of future markets. Clearly, the consolidation of standards will have a critical role in how the next several generations of technological innovations play out. Our expectation is that the related technologies and m-payment systems solutions will become increasing encompassing of broadly-accepted standards, so that producer and consumer uncertainty will be diminished and value-producing investments can be made in much larger measure by both sides. In addition, we expect that m-payments technology innovations will be increasingly prompted by multiple technological platforms – and not just the cell phones and other relatively simple hand-held devices of today. We expect technological convergence, via the blending of the capabilities of multiple distinct technologies today, to drive the purchase of music and video on demand, and the consumption of location-based services identifiable through hand-held mobile devices. In terms of markets and business adoption of these services, we expect m-payments to reach the level of viability in specific applications that we see associated with the use of credit cards today. M-payment-capable devices will be a future means of choice for consumer and business travelers’ procurement of travel, hospitality, rental car and entertainment services, among others. We also expect to see mobile payments services increasingly embedded into other business processes, per the future-oriented value-creation perspective presented in this special issue for use case business modeling analysis in contexts with m-payments-influenced business processes. We also envision other contexts in which
140
Preface / Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 7 (2008) 137–140
m-payments become the key lever for the release of value to the consumer–user and the business-vendor. Locationbased e-commerce, for example, is likely to be an especially fruitful context in which further technical, managerial and strategic experience with m-payments will produce high business value. Eventually mobile payments will be fully embedded in a ubiquitous environment, as a service that will be used automatically by numerous entities (e.g., other services, devices etc.) in a way that is transparent to the end-user. In closing, the guest editors would like to thank all the authors who responded to the call for papers, regardless of whether their paper has been included in this issue. Through their cooperation with the review processes that we established for the special issue, we feel confident in presenting papers that have reached a high level of quality in terms of their research questions, their conceptualization and theoretical basis, their modeling and analysis approaches, their innovative findings, and their messages for research and practice. This has only been possible through the help of reviewers who have given the papers their best support, through developmental reviewing and constructive commentary. The special issue editors acknowledge the contributions of many experts who participated in the review process, and provided helpful suggestions to the authors on improving the content and presentation of the articles. In addition, we wish to thank the journal’s past Coordinating Editor, Norman Sadeh, for the helpful input he provided at the outset of this project. His encouragement was instrumental in helping us to get a better sense of the expected quality of the final product. We also thank the current
Co-Editor in Chief, Chris Westland, who helped out with reviews and generously offered expertise through his own extensive knowledge of electronic payments, and the financial services and e-commerce industries in Asia. Senior Researcher Stamatis Karnouskos SAP AG, SAP Research, Germany E-mail address: [email protected] Robert J. Kauffman W. P. Carey Chair in Information Systems, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, United States E-mail address: rkauff[email protected] Elaine Lawrence Department Chair in Computer Systems, Faculty of Information Technology, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia E-mail address: [email protected] Assistant Professor Key Pousttchi Head of Mobile Commerce Working Group, Business Informatics and Systems Engineering, Business School, Germany E-mail address: [email protected] Available online 11 August 2007