ABSTRACT

This chapter aims to explore what kind of institutional barriers companies must overcome in order to innovate a new mobile payment service. A qualitative case study of mobile payment development in Finnish financial sector is applied to explore institutional factors affecting innovation in payment services. Major findings suggest that the institutional factors (cultural-cognitive, normative, and regulative) affect innovation of mobile payment services in highly institutionalized settings. In addition to defining those barriers, in this study we find that start-ups can use institutional barriers of traditional incumbents as levers for their own innovations.