Internationalization Patterns of Digital Payment System Firms: A Multiple Case Analysis

The purpose of this study is to investigate the internationalization patterns of digital payment system firms through the use of the Uppsala Internationalization Process Model (UIPM) as a conceptual framework. The phenomenon is explored via a multiple-case analysis in order to understand the patterns among the different case studies. Data were collected through different sources: scientific papers, corporate websites, and reputable consulting companies’ reports websites. Data analysis found five themes to answer the research question. The results and the findings of the research suggest that: 1) digital payments system firms, when analyzed by the UIPM, express a fast internationalization process and they start to internationalize by low distance countries in cultural, administrative, geographic, and economic (CAGE) terms, 2) all those firms use a network (technical or business partnerships) to enter overseas, 3) technological and demographic elements are not suitable to understand the possibility of internationalization, 4) the regulatory barriers are not so important as the users’ ones seem to be, 5) the firm-specific advantage that every company had was directly involved in the e-commerce system. Limitations of the research are its methodology and the sampling strategy that limits the results’ generalizability. Nevertheless, the results add knowledge on the UIPM when related to digital payment systems (DPS) firms. According to that vision, it can be helpful for scholars, consultants, entrepreneurs, as well as for private or public managers to better recognize the behavior of these companies when internationalizing.