Understanding M-Commerce Payment Systems through the Analytic Hierarchy Process

TLDR

Online commerce payment systems remain underexplored despite the importance of money transactions. The study evaluates e‑payment systems to identify the most suitable scheme for online commerce, concluding that the stored‑value card is the best overall option. Using the analytic hierarchy process, the authors compare the performance of credit card, stored‑value card, smart card, and telecommunication bill systems. The analysis shows the stored‑value card outperforms the others, yet the credit card’s large user base can outweigh technical flaws, prompting a recommendation to enhance high‑merit systems with broader usage to benefit users.

Abstract

Money is always an ill-tempted subject; however, few works are done to address the payment issue over online commerce. This paper analyzes currently available e-payment systems and finds the stored-value card to be the best overall payment scheme for online commerce. The paper employs the analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a quantitative method of decision-making, to evaluate the performance of four e-payment systems: the credit card, the stored-value card, the smart card, and the telecommunication bill. The results show that the stored-value card has the highest performance among the four options considered. However, our findings pinpoint that a payment alternative with an extremely large customer base, such as the credit card, can be flawed by technological defects but still become the de facto e-payment scheme due to the advantage given by a large customer base. This observation leads us to make the policy suggestion that multiple usages be added to the e-payment systems with higher technological/social merits so that they can gain a critical customer base. Users will benefit as technologically more capable e-payments are widely adopted for online commerce.