The dawn of a mobile payment scheme: The case of Movii
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Mobile wallets replicate physical wallets on a mobile device, in which users can store differentpayment instruments (e.g., cards, transfers) to make mobile payments. As the mobile wallet isadopted, a mobile payment scheme emerges, with its users as elements in a network of transfers.In this article, I study the mobile payment scheme of Movii— the first fintech firm in Colombiaoperating under a financial non-banking license for electronic deposits and payments. Based on aunique dataset of bilateral transfers between Movii’s mobile wallet users, I build, visualize andanalyze Movii’s network, daily from November 18, 2017, to November 25, 2020. Besides theanticipated increase in the number of users and the value of transfers, the visual and quantitativecomplexity of the network of transfers increases over time. This increase in complexity is likelyto be linked to the adoption of Movii’s mobile wallet, which results in users finding new ways touse mobile payments beyond person-to-person transfers, including person-to-business andbusiness-to-business. Also, results suggest the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the evolution ofMovii’s mobile payments scheme.