Enhancing Universal Access to Financial Services: Affordances, Constraints, and Cross-Country Cultural Value Influences on Mobile Payment Apps Use
Authors: Akanfe, Oluwafemi; Valecha, Rohit; Rao, H. Raghav
Journal: Journal of the Association for Information Systems (2026)
DOI: 10.17705/1jais.00988
<jats:p>Mobile payment apps (MPAs) are often promoted by advocates of digital financial access (DFA) as a solution to increase universal access to formal financial services globally. However, MPA use remains lagging across many underserved countries, with varied reactions to digital financial services. This study takes a non-traditional approach, grounded in technology affordances and constraints theory, to explore the impact of DFA relational attributes and cross-country cultural values on MPA use. Analyzing over 34,000 online reviews from MPA users, we employed a two-stage research design: first, we utilized neural networks and natural language processing techniques to identify and quantify DFA relational attributes (affordances and constraints); second, we empirically examined the relationships between these DFA affordances and constraints and MPA use, incorporating cross-country cultural value data to explore how cultural values interact with these relationships. Our findings reveal that when an MPA operates in a traditional value-oriented culture, the positive relationships between the affordances (authentication and identification protection, technical and design, and nomina…