Is the Convenience Worth the Risk? An Investigation of Mobile Payment Usage

The popularity of mobile payment services lies in the convenient transactions they offer to users. In the age of growing cybercrime, however, mobile payment transactions carry risks of financial and data losses. It thus becomes critical to understand how risk and convenience have contrasting impacts on users’ intention to use mobile payments. To investigate this, we consider various dimensions of perceived risk and perceived convenience to understand the net effect of their negative and positive influences on the intention to use. We also examine the actual use behavior predicted by intention along with the influence of habit. The research model, tested using survey responses from a sample of 215 users along with the descriptive answers from the survey respondents, helps us draw crucial insights. The study contributes to the field in a significant manner by providing insights into the balancing effect of risk and convenience on mobile payment service usage, as well as the development of the multi-dimensional scales for the key variables of risk and convenience.