The PAYTECH Book

Accelerating the Adoption of PayTech Innovations

By Dan Horne

Professor and Associate Dean, Providence College School of Business

Introduction

Beginning in the first several years of the new century, predictions were made that mobile payments would make up 20%, 30%, even 50% of all consumer transaction volume by 2015. Here we sit in 2019 with products that do everything they say on the tin and more, but penetration figures in the USA are still well under 1%.

This is by no means to suggest that the problem is restricted to mobile payments. This miscalculation, and the constant undershooting of targets for consumer adoption of new payment technology in general, is the result of three factors:

1. Some forecasts are simply attempts to create self-fulfilling prophecies. The reality is that predictions of revolution make headlines whilst predictions of evolution end up in the waste bin. However, in this information-saturated world, hype is hard to sustain.
2. Innovators fail to understand the core components of consumer adoption of technology. Despite claims of being consumer-centric, many operate in a manner that echoes the “if we build it, they will come” approach of the 1950s and 1960s. Unfortunately, demands on consumers’ time and the flood of information make this approach ineffective even for truly new, hugely beneficial payment innovations.
3. Because financial products involve money, there is a heightened sense of risk that must be overcome before adoption will take place.

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