Adoption and Usage of Mobile Payment Systems by Consumers and Merchants

Abstract

Growth in Indian economy and evolving standard of living of Indians have welcomed room for new technologies in the lives of Indians, leading to the evolution of plethora of technology based solutions. Smartphone is one such multifarious technological solution used for connecting with people to performing financial activities, studying to gaming and shopping. Mobile payments is the recent trend which intensified lately due to collective affairs like government promoting digital India through awareness programmes, demonetization, financial inclusion through JDY, UPI launch, telecom growth with 4G launch and affordable internet facility, economical handsets, growth of m- commerce, new entrants in the m-payment industry and most importantly revamp in the lifestyle of people craving for viable solutions for everything. This is evident as the transaction of mobile payments has witnessed sustained growth in terms of volume as well as value in the last five years as per the RBI data which also indicates involvements by both merchants and consumers in the use of mobile payments system. newlineWhenever any new technology is introduced in the country usually advanced cities or metropolitan cities are the one to adopt it more quickly relatively to other cities and towns. So, this study takes an opportunity to study the adoption and usage of mobile payments in tier II city Ranchi comparing it with a tier I city Kolkata. Plethora of research on the mobile payment systems have been done in several countries but none have focused on comparison of actual usage level in two or more cities of same country. So, this study tries to find the level of awareness and actual usage of mobile payment systems in two varied cities of different states within the same country. In addition hardly researchers have studied merchants and consumer usage of mobile payments together, therefore this work of study focuses on dual aspects - merchants and consumers. The study also tries to find the impact of the independent variables and demographic variables.