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Top1. Introduction
Past several years have marked the popularity of mobile commerce applications, such as mobile shopping, mobile travel service, online to offline (O2O) consumption. (Yang, Liu, Li, & Yu, 2015). This has created plenty of opportunities for organizations by making versatile innovation-based business models (Akturan & Tescan, 2012). The innovative payment methods and services take up diverse names such as mobile wallets, mobile payments, mobile commerce, and mobile banking. Amongst all forms of online payments, an e-wallet is a prepaid account in which the user can place his/her money, and its underlying components are software (stores personal information, grant security and encryption) and information (database of user details) (Sharma, 2017). Mobile commerce accounts for 48% of universal digital-commerce sales as of 2017 and estimates to reach 70% i.e. $4.6 trillion by 2022 (Bansal, Bruno, Denecker, & Niederkorn, 2017). Not surprisingly, the developing nations have surfaced as the leading market of mobile payment services. The GSMA Mobile Money report (2018) states that in Sub-Saharan Africa over 60% of adult populace owns a mobile money account. In 2018, the mobile money industry added 143 million registered customers reaching 866 million (CAGR 20%), most of this growth occurred from Asia, where 90 million new accounts opened. Mobile money continues to play a vital role in financial inclusion. Corresponding to a World Bank Group (2017) report 1.7 billion people worldwide need access to safe and accessible financial services.
This popularity of digital payments has generated a need for secure to operate and open platforms for transactions as these are the inviting elements which consumers search for. Acceptance of m-payments has led to the adoption of e-wallets as an acceptable payment option for the consumers in India as well. With over 500 million smartphone users (Zenith Media, 2018) and the government’s resolve to promote cashless transactions has encouraged acceptance of e-payment platforms in India. Indian customers first experienced e-wallet services in 2006 offered by wallet365.com (controlled by Times Group) in association with YES Bank. Recent socio-economic developments such as demonetization, digital India initiatives, E-commerce increase and consumers’ rising need for convenience proved to be the pivotal factors that fostered mobile payment adoption. According to 2017 Consumer Payments Insight Survey, India is one of the leading markets in terms of mobile wallet adoption with 55.4% of survey respondents indicating usage of mobile wallets. China and Denmark are behind India at second and third place (Global Data, 2018). As per a study by Regalix (2018), e-wallet usage is prevalent among Indians, with 80% of the overall users using it oftener than once a week and 33% using it every day.