DIGITAL PAYMENT PLATFORMS AND SUBSISTENCE ENTREPRENEURS: CHAMPIONING BEYOND THE PANDEMIC

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic brought forth many restrictions and changes in the lifestyle of people across the globe. There was a need for social distancing and contactless exchanges, which accelerated the uptake of services such as digital payment platforms (DPP). In this study, we examine how the adoption of these DPPs was accelerated during the pandemic. Our focus is subsistence entrepreneurs (SEs) who suffer double jeopardy of resource scarcity as well as institutional voids that hinder their technology adoption. We use the exploratory approach to delve into this under-studied area in IS research using constructivist grounded theory. Using data from the in-depth interviews of these subsistence entrepreneurs, we develop a framework of a process that entails not only adoption and persistent use but also the mechanisms for the spread of this technology amongst a section of society that is characterized by poverty, illiteracy, and socio-economic barriers.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital payment platforms
• subsistence entrepreneurs
• grounded theory
• technology adoption

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10919392.2024.2316474

Notes

¹ Demonetization was declared by Prime Minister of India on November 8, 2016 in which currency of the denomination of Rs. 500 and Rs.1000 was taken out of circulation. This caused massive cash crunch in the ensuing months (Crouzet, Gupta, and Mezzanotti 2019).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alka Agarwal

Alka Agarwal is Research Scholar in Information Management at S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research and is pursuing her Fellow Programme in Management in Information Management. Her research interests include the societal impact of technology including digital platforms, frugal innovation, diffusion and adoption of information systems, and methodologies including PLSEM and qualitative methods. Her research paper has been recently published in Behaviour and Information Technology Journal. She has worked in top management consulting firms before joining academics.

Ashish Kumar Jha

Ashish Kumar Jha is an Associate Professor in Business Analytics at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and Director of Trinity Centre for Digital Business and Analytics at Trinity College Dublin. His primary area of research is how firms and users interact and communicate on social media and its impact on firm value and spread of information/misinformation. Ashish is an associate editor at European Journal of Information Systems and Information & Management and a senior editor at Journal of Organizational computing and E-Commerce and regularly reviews for all top journals in the field including MISQ, JMIS, JAIS among others. His works have been published in journals like JMIS, I&M, DSS, Decision Sciences, IJPE among others and he regularly presents at top conferences in the field.

Jyoti Jagasia

Jyoti Jagasia is Associate Professor of Information Systems at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management and Research, Mumbai and holds a PhD in Information Management. Her research interests include areas such as knowledge management, digital social innovation, and digital education. She has 2 decades of work experience as a practitioner in the IT services area and has worked on projects with notables IT service companies like Datamatics, CGI, Tech Mahindra, M&M to name a few.