Rather than exposing the responses for each interview session individually, we have
summarised and synthesised the various results in a number of key findings. Our
overall finding was that the market players were skeptical, sometimes even cynical
about the succesful introduction of mobile payment solutions. Certainly, there were
no signs of massive take-up in both countries. This may well be a sign of the times,
because in Winter 2001 the situation for the mobile industry looked particularly
gloomy. For example, one interviewee explained that his company had participated
in mobile payment experiments in multiple countries and with multiple participants.
Neither of these had been very succesful and because of this he advised us to go
back home and conduct another, more promising research project. While not every
interviewee took this pessimistic stance, the general feeling was similar.
Of course, what was and still is interesting to us is why mobile payment systems
had not been that succesful so far and why it was that not every participant agreed
that it would be succesful in the future. Do the factors that were identified in the
context of internet payment systems play a role, or were there other factors? The
remainder of this section deals with these questions.
We observed that a mere list of critical success factors does not fully do justice to
the fact that the introduction of a mobile payment system is a complex economic