Moving from bricks to clicks: Merchants' acceptance of the mobile payment in Malaysia

Abstract

In the hustle and bustle of modern life, everyone wants to enhance and advance their working and personal life and mobile phones have become the favoured technology to achieve that aim. In light of this trend, most financial service providers have taken steps to meet this new lifestyle demand by developing mobile applications so that people can manage their financial matters on the go. This movement has also motivated many merchants around the world to adopt mobile technology as part of their aspiration to provide a better experience for their customers. This study explores the factors influencing Malaysian merchants' acceptance of mobile payment as an additional payment method to the traditionally accepted payment methods of cash and credit/debit cards. The aim of this study is to figure out the factors affecting merchants' decision to use mobile payments to help the provider companies shape their own marketing plans and consider the weak points that may turn the merchants against this marktet. This empirical study uses a survey method and AMOS to test and analyse the perceptions of a sample of 125 food and beverage providers located in food courts in 10 shopping malls at the Klang Valley in Malaysia. The study found that perceived usefulness has a significant positive impact on mobile payment acceptance, while the perceived ease of use has no significant impact on the merchants' decision to offer this payment method, which is not compatible with the technology acceptance model (TAM). In addition, this study added a further two factors to the TAM to investigate their effects on merchants' acceptance of mobile payments and found a significant positive effect for compatibility with customers' needs but no significant effect for perceived risk, which can be justified by the nature of this industry. This study, therefore, provides invaluable insights into the factors affecting merchants' acceptance of mobile payments, especially food and beverages providers in food courts located in shopping malls of Malaysia. © 2020, Social Sciences Research Society.