The growth of payment apps like Alipay, Apple Pay and Samsung Pay, the risks and the benefits, and the problems these create

Abstract

The third party mobile payments have grown rapidly since 2010s and an increasing number of people in China start to choose third party mobile payment such as Alipay for their payment. Previous studies suggested that the convenience of using, the high security level and the using habit influence customers’ choice of mobile payment apps in China. This thesis tries to examine the relationship between the convenience of using, high popularity and the discount offered by Alipay to discover the factors influence Alipay’s rapid growth. Similar to previous studies, the convenience of using and high popularity have positive significant impact on consumers’ preference for Alipay. However, discount offered by Alipay do not has significant effect on preference for using Alipay in my research. Then, since Alipay developed its diversified functions to satisfy users’ needs and expand its market, this thesis also discovers the effect of the diversified functions of Alipay. I choose three of the diversified functions in Alipay that are Ant Forest, Yu’E Bao and Huabei and examine the impact of them on people’s using intention of Alipay. The result indicates that Yu’E Bao and Huabei have significant impact whereas Ant Forest does not have significant impact on the using intention of Alipay. Finally, in contrast to Alipay, this thesis discovers the comparative disadvantages of Apple Pay and Samsung Pay to develop in China. I attempt to test whether the limitation of closed system, low utilization rate and lack of knowledge has significant influence on people’s unwillingness of using Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. Based on the result, I find that it’s consistent with the previous literature review that the limitation of closed system and low utilization rate positively influenced people’s unwillingness of using Apple Pay. However, in my study, the lack of knowledge does not have significant impact on people’s unwillingness of using Apple Pay and Samsung Pay. I build three multiple regression models and null hypothesizes to test these relationships in this thesis and utilize SPSS analysis.