How does the adoption of digital payment technologies influence unorganized retailers’ performance? An investigation in an emerging market

Abstract

Unorganized retail dominates the retail landscape across emerging markets (EMs) and is undergoing rapid digitalization. However, the extant literature has not explored the impact of digital payment system adoption on unorganized retailer (UR) performance. By conducting three related studies and relying on the tenets of the resource-based view of firms, we show that digital payment technologies’ adoption increases economic performance (i.e., revenue) for a sample of 403 EM URs. This effect is enhanced by such retailers’ prioritization of technological investments and attenuated by their credit facilities. We find that card-based and app-based technologies positively impact UR performance. URs can maximize their performance by adopting two technologies, and there is a synergistic effect between card-based and account-based technologies. On average, adoption increases a UR’s economic performance by 9.6%. We present a nuanced understanding of whether, how much, and which digital payment technologies should be adopted by EM URs.