Enhancing Universal Access to Financial Services: Affordances, Constraints, and Cross-Country Cultural Value Influences on Mobile Payment Apps Use

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 nominal transaction fee) and MPA use are weaker, and the negative relationships between the constraints (security and credit application complexity) and MPA use are attenuated. However, in survival-value-oriented cultures, the positive relationships between the affordances (authentication and identification protection, and technical and design) and MPA use, and the negative relationships between the credit application complexity constraint and MPA use, are amplified. This study offers methodological, theoretical, and practical contributions to promoting universal financial access through designing and implementing culturally sensitive MPA usage strategies across countries.