Firms Strategies on E-payments Market: From Breaks to Convergence?

Payment means have evolved since the development of the E-trade. E-trade has abolished physical frontiers and entrepreneurs can meet a foreign demand even for small exchange. E-trade allows exchange between people that could not have met before the Internet. A bookseller in the US can now send his products easily in Europe and more the product is digitalized, easier and costless the exchange can be done. These new opportunities had demanded new means of payment. The traditional monetary systems are designed mainly on geographical grounds and they generate very high transaction costs on international level. E-trade demands international micropayment systems that are cost competitive. The paper explains the emergence of E-payment systems and tries to give a taxonomy regarding to their strategies. Firms such as PayPal first dominated the international micropayment markets, but the traditional banks are now entering this market. At the same time, PayPal is trying to enter the traditional market of current accounts. The emergence of mobile phone payments has brought new actors in the market. All these changes combined with a strict regulation framework lead to more cooperation and convergence than breaking strategies.