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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Technological Forecasting & Social Change

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/techfore

The development of alternate payment methods and their impact on

customer behavior: The Bizum case in Spain
José María Visconti-Caparrós *, Juan Ramón Campos-Blázquez

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Technological disruption and social transformation are shaping and explain the radical changes introduced in
Digital business ecosystem financial services. A new technological mix of mobile-apps, big data, blockchain, AI, cloud computing and digital
Modularity theory platforms is taking place with unprecedented speed and is forcing traditional banks to consider this technology to
Fintech
form part of new collaborative value creation networks, such as digital business ecosystems (DBEs). Traditional
Digital payment
Social network effect
payment habits based on cash and credit or debit cards are being replaced by new innovative formats of mobile
Consumer behavior instant payment among end users (P2P). Through a single case study – Bizum’s DBE – the purpose of this research
is to explore how successful was the defensive strategy developed by traditional banking entities with the
objective to lead the new mobile instant payment ecosystem in Spain. The findings show that Bizum’s DBE is
helping traditional banking entities to create a superior digital value that is being adopted very quickly by a huge
number of users in Spain. The main contribution of this study is the complete explanation of how a winning
strategy of creation and development of a DBE can: i) ensure survival of incumbents in the face of threats from
digital disruptive actors, and ii) transform consumer habits very quickly, due to the superior created value as a
new solution for that need. We used the novel reformulation of the Modularity Theory (Baldwin, 2020c) which
can be considered as a first step for a DBE-specific theorisation and supportive framework to understand the deep
social impact of the different network effects generated.

1. Introduction crowdlending, wallet-QR codes, robo-advisors, retailer capital invest­

Traditional banking and financial operators have been disrupted by
new Fintech start-ups, providing new evidence of how existing tech­
nologies and products are replaced by disruptive innovations (Bower
and Christensen, 1995; Christensen et al., 2015). As a consequence, the
stability of the financial market was replaced by disruption from Digital
Business Ecosystems (DBEs).
Within the financial sector, payments are used by most of the pop­
ulation, so they are the most popular financial instruments, being one of
the largest components of Fintech (Palmiéa et al., 2020). For these au­
thors, Fintech payment is a cluster of solutions: point-of sale (POS)
payment services as digital storefronts or personal payment services,
some even including the option of cryptocurrencies as bitcoin.
Incumbents are shocked by new digital players who introduce
disruption and value because these new actors play as orchestrators in
the Ecosystem Economy by deploying new strategies (Jacobides, 2019).
They are threatened by new realities such as open banking with neo­
banks and challenger banks, specialized personal finance and saving
actors, new digital mortgage specialists, P2P lending platforms,
ment tools, blockchain services, regtech players, finance as a service,
retail payment solutions, and data and operational interface application
programming (APIs). Most of these solutions have been analysed by
academic researchers (Palmiéa et al., 2020) and other institutions (EC,
2017; EY, 2017). All these new possibilities are changing banking
product portfolio and payment solutions.
These solutions are highly appreciated among end users due to many
reasons: they are easy to use, accessible through mobiles (Hussain et al.,
2019), fast to execute, cheap or free (Anderson, 2009), and involve a
feeling of belonging to a digital community that is inclusive in terms of
age and gender (Liébana-Cabanillas et al., 2014, 2015). As new digital
solutions perform better and better, most of the old product end users
switch to the latter (Chen et al., 2018; Kumaraswamy et al., 2018;
Schmidt and Druehl, 2008)
Concerning payment solutions, the combination of high social
adoption plus disruptive innovation by new financial agents is forming
new digital business ecosystems (DBEs) for payments. In different areas,
there are new electronic money issuers (EMIs) of different sizes: the
biggest ones are Chinese (Alipay, Wechat), but smaller ones have been

* Corresponding author at: ESIC Business and Marketing School, Avenida Juan XXIII 12, 28224 Pozuelo de Alarcón, Madrid, Spain.
E-mail address: josemaria.visconti@esic.edu (J.M. Visconti-Caparrós).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2021.121330
Received 25 May 2021; Received in revised form 11 October 2021; Accepted 31 October 2021
Available online 22 November 2021
0040-1625/© 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez
launched in other places (Rappi in Colombia, Nubank in Brazil, among
other cases). The biggest ones are developing their solutions under a
coopetition paradigm, perceived as all-in-one commerce centered apps
(De Reuver et al., 2015).
Other bigtechs, such as Facebook, are trying to offer a stablecoin,
known as Libra, composed of a cluster of big corporations grouped under
the Association Libra whose support would be bank deposits and bond-
quality sovereigns. Payments, by their nature, demand a community or
social network effect, only if they are accepted by the majority, and are
effective and operational.
The combination of those orchestrators-bigtechs and huge user
communities generates online social networks (OSN). These structures
emerged in the 2000s as a consequence of Web 2.0 capabilities making
possible easier connectivity among users through platforms (Pal­
acios-Marqués et al., 2021). Adoption of this new connectivity has been
fast and it has produced consumer behavior changes (Pallis et al., 2011).
For consumers, OSNs as sources of information are more confident than
traditional corporate and marketing communications (Diffley et al.,
2011). Based on this evidence, firms are adopting these new artefacts as
useful tools (Martins and Patricio, 2013).
In addition, other events such as drastic regulation changes driven by
the European Union (EU) via the Payment Services Directive (PSD-
PSD2) since 2007, the initiative of the European Central Bank (ECB) to
deploy immediate transfers in Europe under the SEPA Instant Credit
Transfer scheme (SCT Inst), and a consumer need that was not well
covered at that time, were requesting an urgent response by traditional
banking firms in Spain to deal with this rapidly changing market.
Consequently, they decided to launch Bizum’s DBE in October 2016, as a
mobile instant payment solution.
Apart from initial interest and conceptualization emerging from the
European Union (EU) project (Stanley and Briscoe, 2010), DBE research
is limited (Senyo et al., 2019a) and, therefore, any new evidence of
DBE’s post-implementation results is essential. Accordingly, we inves­
tigated the overarching research question: How was Bizum’s DBE
implemented by traditional banking entities and what are the success
factors which lead the new mobile instant payment ecosystem in Spain?
Thus, we conducted a single holistic case study, whose design has
been drawn up using the most relevant contributions (Eisenhardt and
Graebner, 2007; Maxwell, 1996; Yin, 2017) from a literature review.
More specifically, we examined Bizum’s DBE using the Modularity
Theory (Baldwin, 2020a) as a refence model (Morcillo et al., 2021).
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. The second section
presents the background literature concerning Fintech and Open Pay­
ments, as well as DBEs and Modularity Theory. The third section is
concerned with the methodology used for this research. The case anal­
ysis of Bizum is discussed in the fourth section. The paper concludes by
suggesting avenues for future research, pointing out the limitations of
this research and outlining contributions.
2. Literature review
2.1. Fintech and open payments
In this changing environment, new payment solutions providers
(PSPs) are demanding new standard rules and interoperability to sup­
port their new digital solutions. In order to define the concept of Fintech,
some authors (Lee and Teo, 2015) propose five principles: low profit
margin, light asset, expandability, innovation and easy compliance.
Other organisms, such as The US Financial Stability Board (FSB, 2017),
defined Fintech as financial technological innovation resulting in new
business models, applications, processes or products. It is evident that
Fintech is a new term and it evolves in different pathways. Following
some researchers, there is an expected consolidation of some di­
mensions, such as cross-country and cross-regional peer-to-peer transfer
systems, the smartphone in financial transactions and wearable facilities
for financial transactions, in order to explain future Fintech (Gomber
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330
et al., 2017), as a study phenomenon, is easier to find in developed and
modern economies rather than in more fragile financial structures
(Haddad and Lars 2018).
Fintech is a relatively new practice that has developed considerably
during the last decade. Many taxonomies of Fintech business models
(Eickhoff et al., 2017) can be found in the literature, such as online
lending, crowdfunding and crowdinvesting, transaction and payment
terminals, personal finance management (PFM), digital currency and
cryptocurrency, mobile point of sale (mPOS), robo-advisors and
e-banking (Akkizidis and Stagars, 2015), payment business model,
wealth management business model, crowdfunding business model,
lending business model, capital market business model and insurance
services business model (Lee and Shin, 2018), and so on. Finally, another
synthetic option (Liu+ et al., 2020) includes nine Fintech business
models: online lending, crowdfunding, transaction and payment termi­
nals, personal finance management, digital currency and crypto­
currency, mobile point of sale, robo-advisors, ebanking, and InsurTech.
It is also interesting to check a parallel approach to this reality under
another name: Digital Financial Services (DFS). For some authors
(Pashkov and Pelykh, 2020) there is a clear gap of research on modeling
Digital Business Ecosystems (DBE) for financial companies. In their
opinion, a better knowledge of DFS’models would be valuable in order
to define Ecosystem Strategies (ES) and to get a deeper understanding of
the financial sector’s digital transformation. Implications of counting on
an ES are critical because it affects: forecasting the needs of actors when
they contribute in financial transactions, providing trust across all DBE
participants in terms of transaction security and risk control, and as an
enabler of value exchange processes.
Following this DFS approach, actors can be split into three clusters of
organization type: value chain, value shop, and value network (Gromek,
2018). Each cluster has a different profile: value chain is hierarchical
and organized for being effective in terms of product management, value
shop follows a matrix structure and by combining resources get to
realize capabilities, and a value network provides additional value to the
client or user optimizing network effects.
According to Parker et al. (2016, 17), “network effects refers to the
impact that the number of users of a platform has on the value created for
each user. Positive network effects refer to the ability of a large, well-managed
platform community to produce significant value for each user of the
platform”.
From governments, a new financial regulation is clarifying how to
work within these new digital payment ecosystems composed by tradi­
tional and start-up players. Digital technology has been the key enabler
to make possible this deep change: fast mobility adoption, new user-
friendly interfaces under app formats, IoTs developments, 5 G, cloud
computing, AI, big data among others are the critical enablers. Ac­
cording to IX Report of Payment Methods Trends (Minsait, 2019), the
international legal framework shows different levels of ambition
(Fig. 1):
■ Open Payment enables the synchronizing of financial customer data
already held by the financial entities (traditional banks), with the
data of other financial services providers, via Application Program­
ming Interface (API). That opens competition only in the vertical
aspect of the payments. In Europe, under the PSD2 umbrella, two
types of services are regulated: the Payment Initiation Services (PIS)
and the Account Information Services (AIS).
■ Open Banking allows a wider financial services offer to consumers,
such as financing and saving.
■ Open Finance represents a wider supplier environment subject to the
obligation of openness of data and competition such as insurance
companies, investments funds.
■ Open Data/Open Life consists of the extension of the open data
model to other non-financial industries.
Before this structural vision of banking evolution supported by
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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez
mobile, the enablers to build the trust in mobile banking were already
studied (Kim et al., 2009). Among them, we highlight the following: the
massive adoption of smartphones, the improvement of mobile payment
technology and the capture, storage and analysis of massive customer
data. More recently and specifically for mobile payment, new research
point out usefulness, subjective norms, and personal innovativeness as
critical factors to explain the direct influence on intention to use it
(Liébana-Cabanillas et al., 2021).
There is a clear difference in terms of value proposition between
traditional banks and new digital Fintech players. The new players use
digital technology to provide innovation with higher value for the end
customer, while traditional banks are using technology to improve
existing business processes (Pashkov and Pelykh, 2020).
2.2. Digital business ecosystems under modularity theory
Since the beginning of this century, changes have been predicted on
how we were going to understand the economy with the consideration of
new networked forms of communities where trust-based organizations
would lead faster innovation based on knowledge generation and
dissemination (Adler, 2001).
Over the last decade, the literature on DBEs has focused on four main
themes, namely business issues, technical issues, DBE conceptualization
and DBE artefacts (Senyo et al., 2019a).
From the concept of business ecosystems, in DBE two natures
converge: digital and business (Stanley and Briscoe, 2010). Moore
(1993, 76) suggested that “a company should be viewed not as a member of
a single industry but as part of a variety of industries. In a business ecosystem,
companies co-evolve capabilities around a new innovation: they work coop­
eratively and competitively to support new products, satisfy customer needs,
and eventually incorporate the next round of innovations”. Conceptually,
DBE was born in the Lisbon Agenda in March 2000 and in 2002 was the
core of an EU project to support collaboration between small and me­
dium enterprises (SMEs) based on efficient usage of technology
(Nachira, 2002).
Although DBE has developed considerably during the last decade, as
a concept, it remains under development. Nachira et al. (2007, 9) refer
to “the technical infrastructure, based on a peer-to-peer distributed software
technology that transports, finds, and connects services and information over
Internet links enabling networked transactions, and the distribution of all the
digital “objects” present within the infrastructure”.
Different key elements are shaping the concept: integration of a value
chain composed by organizations of different nature (Kandiah and
Gossain, 1998), co-creation or working together in order to meet
customer expectations (Accenture, 2015;Digital McKinsey, 2018),
self-organization and self-evolution under cooperative and competitive
relationships to produce products and services by using technology
(Dini et al., 2005; Melville et al., 2004), value co-destruction as a
consequence of mismanagement of value co-creation (Abedin and
Bidar, 2019), exam of capabilities, specifically digital skills before any
DBE set up (Innovate UK, 2015; TechCity, 2017).
From the concept of technical issues, for some authors (Floridi, 2015)
transformation explains this phenomenon and it could be conceived as
the consequence of how Information and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) are shaking traditional and known frameworks in four different
ways: blurring the distinction between reality and virtuality, or between
human, machine and nature, transforming information scarcity into
information abundance and the shift of priorities from entities to in­
teractions. Technology modifies the way we act by creating new envi­
ronments, the infosphere, where boundaries between online and offline
activities or behaviors are blurred. Digitization and digitalization are not
always differentiated (Leinwand and Mani, 2021). DBE can be subjects
of digital transformation, being entities that evolve as a consequence of
their own Information Technology’s dynamism (IT) interacting with
constituent firms (Tan et al., 2020).
From the concept of business issues, in addition to the mentioned
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330
coopetition effect, where collaboration and competition has evolved in a
positive way, new aspects in the relationship among companies deserve
to be highlighted. For some authors there is a clear synergy derived from
positive spill-over externalities and regional concentration with further
growth (Mun Heng, 2015; Enterprise Singapore, 2019). Taking into
consideration new areas of business, other authors explain how ecom­
merce is capturing benefits from social media and websites to increase
utilization levels and smartphones to reduce costs in the transactions
(Amormkitvikai and Lee, 2020).
From DBEs artefacts, we found different research lines. Enterprise
architecture is a framework (Zachman, 1999) that inspires DBE archi­
tecture and modeling (Adner, 2017) following two different approaches:
an ecosystem membership-based one, or in other words, interactions
and symbiotic relationships to create new business opportunities, and a
structural one, focused on how to create relationships between partners
to create and to implement a common value proposition. DBE models
represent new artefacts, and the role of architect or orchestrator is the
representation of an opportunity to coordinate partners (Pashkov and
Pelykh, 2020).
Recent research emphasizes the different roles that actors can adopt
in DBE –enabler, realizer, orchestrator – depending on the position and
function that they decide to play. For these authors, DBEs satisfy at least
one of the ten vital needs: health, recreation, work, consumption, spir­
ituality, socializing, education, entertainment, living and mobility. The
combination of role and vital need explain and determine four possible
strategies to be developed in the DBE: life area expansion, life area
integration, life area focus, and role dominance (Kawohl et al., 2021).
Although this theory is novel and rich in contents and instruments of
analyses, the consideration of vital needs is key and unfortunately,
financial services is not included in that list.
The most sophisticated DBEs evolve and become platforms. This way
to organize resources and provide value has been researched due to the
transforming process of the economy through networked markets
(Parker et al., 2016). DBE as an artefact is inclusive, so for some authors
(Sun et al., 2016) the key point is the open nature and the consequent
name of Open Digital Business Ecosystem (ODBE) where we find four
key functional components: business participants and their digital ca­
pabilities, Digital Business competency value, DBE value cloud, and
innovation ecosystem. Another interesting aspect of the artefact is the
multi-agent constitution (Senyo et al., 2019b).
Additionally, in online peer to peer platform markets, there are three
main business models: hosting of listings, actively managed peer trans­
actions, and platform governed peer transactions (EC, 2017).
For the purpose of this research, we chose the definition of DBE
proposed by Senyo et al. (2019a, 53), “a socio-technical environment of
individuals, organizations and digital technologies with collaborative and
competitive relationships to co-create value through shared digital platforms”.
Besides that, the term DBE is not only used without having a clear
meaning, but also without a clear reference to a particular theory
(Senyo et al., 2019a). Based on this evidence, after a deep literature
review, we propose the Modularity Theory (Baldwin, 2020a) as a
reference model to analyze DBE (Morcillo et al., 2021).
The Modularity Theory framework considers that technology shapes
both technical dependencies and organizational ties. Likewise, sophis­
ticated ecosystems evolve towards platforms. Baldwin (2019, 1) states
that “Platform systems and Step process call for different forms of organi­
zations. Step process rewards technical integration, unified governance, risk
aversion, and the use of direct authority, while platform systems reward
modularity, distributed governance, risk taking, and autonomous
decision-making. In this theory framework, technology shapes organizations
by influencing the search for value in an economy made up of free agents”.
For Baldwin (2020c, 11) platforms is: “a technical system comprising a
core set of essential functional elements (the platform) plus a set of optional
complements. The optional complements may be products, processes, trans­
actions or messages. The platform has no value except in conjunction with the
options”. Additionally, that platform is open if: “options are exercised by
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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez
Fig. 1. Levels of ambition of the international legal framework in Fintech (Minsait, 2019).
Fig. 2. Ecosystems taxonomy derived from methods of coordinating ecosystems and correspondence with Bizum’s DBE (Morcillo et al., 2021).
external agents not under the control of the platform sponsor. The sponsor
and users of an open platform constitute its ecosystem”. This taxonomy
means a relevant contribution derived from the main methods of coor­
dination employed in Ecosystems as it illustrated in Fig. 2:(1) the price
system; (2) bilateral negotiations and contracts; (3) multilateral agree­
ments and systems integration; and (4) platforms.
Under this theory, platforms can adopt different ways (closed vs
open) and within open platforms, they can be: standard-based platforms,
logistical or supply chain platforms, transaction platforms and
communication platforms. The main attribute of an open platform sys­
tem is that options are exercised by external agents without requiring
control of the platform sponsor. The sponsor and users of an open
platform constitute its ecosystem (Baldwin, 2020c).
For the development and final success of DBEs, according to Baldwin
(2020b), there are four main issues: two technical problems and two
concerning their property rights defense. The technical problems are: (1)
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330
to provide all essential functional components, and (2) they must solve
system-wide technical bottlenecks wherever they emerge. Concerning
their property rights, the issues are: (1) controlling and defending one or
more strategic bottlenecks, and (2) preventing others from gaining
control of any system-wide strategic bottlenecks.
3. Research method
We opted for a qualitative case study approach (Table 1), since this is
an excellent way of empirical research when the nature of the phe­
nomenon is complex and observed reality is not easily separated from its
organizational context (Langley, 1999). The complexity of the research,
such as its attempt to analyze the interfirm relations or governance
within Bizum in its actual context, justifies the suitability of this research
strategy (Yin, 2017). Its application in this research is based on an
exploratory and descriptive study.
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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330

Table 1 final result. We agreed with Bizum an initial set of questions that were
Case study data. Source: Authors. part of negotiation to get approval in June 2020.
Purpose of research Understand motivations, characteristics and key Taking into consideration the high interest of Bizum as a novel dig­
factors of a digital busienss ecosystem (DBE). ital phenomenon with Spanish society, all materials obtained from the
Analyze how successful the implementation of a interviews were contrasted against newspaper articles, news, internal
DBE can be as a defensive strategy by incumbents
publications, and updates from the corporate website. As researchers,
to lead the mobile instant payment ecosystem in
Spain. during the process we were Bizum´s users in order to get direct obser­
Methodology of research Single holistic case study (single analysis unit). vation and experience of this digital solution. Looking for intersubjective
Descriptive and exploratory study. reliability, we used some narratives from one subject to confirm, check,
Single analysis unit Bizum’s DBE, a mobile instant payment solution. verify or contradict others in a social triangulation (Miles and Huber­
Type of sample Logical and theoretical sample (capacity of
man, 1994). As explained, data and observations coming from various
transferability of the phenomenon studied), non-
random (sampling and statistical generalization). sources coalesced and supported to build a complete narrative with
Sample Single case: case of Bizum’s DBE exhaustive explanations of the desired process outcomes (Langley,
Evidence-gathering methods Documentary review (documentation and 1999).
archives).
Due to the flexible nature of the case research methodology, data
Multiple semi-structured interviews with open-
ended questions. analysis was handled in tandem with data collection (Myers and New­
Use of physical, technological and cultural man, 2007). Based on our review of the literature on digital business
artefacts. ecosystems, we identified an initial set of topics to guide data collection
Information sources Internal: internal reports and studies. and scripts of the interviews (Klein and Myers, 1999). All data, inputs,
External: publications, Bizum website and other
and insights obtained from each interview were organized in different
websites.
Key informers Relevant employees, project managers and thematic clusters. In case of discrepancy, we proceeded to verify with
directors dealing with Bizum’s DBE. And an other actors or to check the theoretical framework of this paper. Several
external stakeholder of Kutxa Bank. iterations of the information process were required to make sure that our
Methods of analyzing the Essentially qualitative:
formulation of the case organization was consistent and coherent (Klein
evidence Search for key factors
Search for critical difficulties
and Myers, 1999).
Identification and description of the steps to
implement such an initiative. 4. Bizum case analysis
Analysis of critical decisions.
Scientific approach Analytical induction through replication logic
Bizum, founded in 2016, is the brand name of the company Sociedad
(analytical generalization).
Evaluation of the Validity (constructive, internal and external), de Procedimientos de Pago, S.L. It represents the solution of open pay­
methodological rigor and reliability, consistency (contextual and ment from traditional banks, which initially led to easy instant payments
quality theoretical – interpretative). between people (P2P) and, later, between people and e-commerce or
Date conducted June 2020 – January 2021
institutions (for example, donations to non-governmental organiza­
tions). Bizum acts as an Open Payment from a functional perspective,
The reason for choosing Bizum was because this new start-up has but in terms of constitution, organization and development is a great
successfully developed and implemented a digital business ecosystem example of a DBE.
(DBE) in Spain. In only five years and with only seven workers, Bizum Regarding peer to peer platform business models (EC 2016), Bizum
has penetrated into more than 70% of the Spanish banking population. It matches with the third model, typical of the larger platforms, and
offers a digital solution for instant payments by using an app. characterised by setting one or more of the contractual terms of the peer
We used a methodological triangulation – multiple perspectives to to peer transaction and controlling its performance. This conclusion
converge on the phenomenon – to validate the data. Between June 2020 coincides with the transactional consideration derived from Baldwin
and January 2021, we gathered evidence from four in-depth interviews (2020c). Her taxonomy is represented in Fig. 2, and this type of platform
with key participants, internal and external documentation reviews, and could be open or closed. Bizum is an open transaction platform because
from technological artifacts to record interviews. any end user or banking actor can participate in it.
The main data collection method was semi-structured interviews,
open-ended guidelines and took the form of guided conversation rather
than structured queries. We conducted four formal individual in­ Table 2
terviews. We interviewed Angel Nigorra, Bizum’s General Manager, Main elements and hierarchy of the Modularity Theory used to analyze Bizum’s
Lorena Poza, Bizum’s Marketing Manager, Fernando Rodríguez, Busi­ DBE (Morcillo et al., 2021).
ness Development Manager, and Inés Monguilot, Kutxabank’s Market­ Main elements Hierarchy of Bizum’s Technology shaping
ing, Publicity and Channels Director (one of the members of Bizum’s of Modularity Modularity equivalences value
ecosystem). It is relevant to state that Bizum is composed of seven em­ Theory Theory
ployees, so the three people interviewed represent more than 40% of the Bottleneck Functional • P2P payments • Big data: phone
team. Additionally, the professional role and responsibility in the or­ components • E commerce number-bank
ganization was part of the selection criteria. All the interviews lasted payments accounts
• NGO payments
around 90 min. We video recorded all the interviews with Microsoft Modules Modules • Directory - • Mobile
Teams and transcribed them verbatim. We also had ongoing dialog with Informational • App
our main contacts to clarify any misunderstanding by telephone and by • Prosecution- • Operational Spanish
email. Informational banking system
• Transference Tecnology(SNCE SCT
In order to prevent any fear regarding the shared and spoken content
-Transactional Inst)
with each person, we assured confidentiality and anonymity of the data • Bank settlement- • Informational
or insights provided, especially when potentially there were evident Trans actional Spanish banking
risks of sensitive information (Myers and Newman, 2007). The interview • Ordering - system Technology
questions were exploratory in nature, but due to the different roles, Transactional
Zone of Technical • Bizum
questions in each case were open-ended and tailored to optimize the authorities system ecosystem

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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez
4.1. Deployment
Once, the Bizum platform has been characterized, we explore the key
factors of the successful deployment of Bizum’s DBE. They are a
consequence of how the ecosystem was created and captured value. To
determine the characteristics of Bizum’s DBE, its main components,
relationships, and key factors, we used the Modularity Theory frame­
work (Table 2). Following that theory, functional components can be
combined and recombined in various ways. Technology search is
essentially a search for new combinations of functional components that
capture new phenomena, serve new functions or serve old functions in
better ways (Baldwin, 2020b). In fact, Bizum combines previous assets,
such as banking entities, Redsys, Iberpay and Cecabank, in order to
configure a new instant method of payment with a mobile. The three
elements of architecture and its hierarchy, are shown, in the two first
columns of Table 2. The equivalence with Bizum’s elements is repre­
sented in column three. That anatomic correspondence supports the
axiom of technology shapes value. The final resulting digital ecosystem
is a specific combination of digital assets (column 4).
In Bizum’s ecosystem, the banking entities had to manage their
modular structure (the technical architecture) by solving four issues:
two technical problems and two concerning their property rights de­
fense. There were several technical problems. The first problem was to
provide all essential functional components. The main functional com­
ponents in Bizum’s ecosystem were bank entities and technical sup­
pliers, the integrator organism – Bizum – as a legal entity, a brand for an
easy recognition among end users, a directory of mobile phones and
banking accounts and end user community creation taking advantage of
network effects. Secondly, they had to solve system-wide technical
bottlenecks wherever they emerged. In that sense, Bizum was an
orchestrator organizing technical modules together with other entities,
such as Redsys, Cecabank and Iberpay, in order to make operational
tasks possible. Regarding their property rights, they solved two strategic
problems: firstly, control and defense of one or more strategic bottle­
necks – that happened when bank entities perceived a conflict of interest
with other profitable business models, such as credit card payments;
Fig. 3. Main components and their relationships in Bizum’s architecture (Morcillo et al., 2021).
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330
secondly, preventing others from gaining control of any system-wide
strategic bottlenecks. Inés Monguilot, and Ángel Nigorra, agreed
that… “Bizum’s creation was itself the way to be protected against new
digital Fintech actors’ entrance”.
Bizum’s case satisfies Baldwin’s (2020b) conclusions: (1) no one can
profit from a technical system unless all essential functional components
are assembled into a working system; (2) as the technical system
evolves, the underlying technical recipes change; (3) a firm or individual
that solves a system-wide technical bottleneck and can exclude others
from using it can use its power of holdup to tax other participants in the
system. In Bizum, it is evident that the system works thanks to a perfect
assemblage of all functional components. After the creation, the tech­
nical system evolved from P2P payment towards other modalities, such
as e-commerce or NGO payments. Ángel Nigorra, and Lorena Poza,
pointed to new development possibilities out of the initial payment
method. Finally, there is a clear consensus over the collaborative work
from banking entities, who in essence are competitors. According to
Ángel Nigorra, and Inés Monguilot: “There is no evidence of any precedent
case of exclusion from one entity over another one”.
This framework defined three dimensions of architecture: bottle­
necks, modules and zones of authority.
1 Bottlenecks can be technical or strategic issues and are characterized
because it is necessary to the functioning of the system; they are also
a source of value. In Bizum, the main initial bottleneck was to allow
collaboration among banking competitors in order to get a common
instant payment solution as an effective and complete operation for
end-to-end users, who were customers of different entities.
2 For that, it was necessary to develop modules as a group of tasks and
decisions that are tightly connected to each other. At Bizum, those
modules were directory, compensation, banking settlement and
transference itself.
3 In Bizum’s architecture, either banking entities or technical suppliers
were zones of authorities.
Bizum works by linking customers’phone numbers and email
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Table 3
Deployment’s components. Note: I: Supported by interviews; S: Supported by secondary sources.
Explanation Pros Cons

Internal Incumbents–traditional Spanish Banks–created and 1) Anticipation: (I)
DBE developed an innovative digital solution for instant P2P “From the beginning, the idea of launching payment
creation payments, responding to an end user no satisfied need between individuals was adopted as a still very little
and regulatory changes developed niche where there was practically no
demand, nor competition”- Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
2) Dual strategy: reactive and proactive: (I,S)
“Proactive in the sense that it is perceived that users
are increasingly going to demand more secure, faster,
more immediate, more comfortable payment services”
– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“Reactive in the sense that within the framework of
PSD2 it is intuited that competitors outside the world
of payments were going to increase” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
3) Right strategy: (I)
“The strategy has remained and the practical
execution had to be reviewed” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
“All the process was defined from the beginning” –
Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
“In Europe there is project that is called European
Bizum, looking for interoperability in order to proceed
with transfer between two countries” – Lorena Poza,
Bizum
4) Time to market: (I,S)
“Until Oct 2016, we needed 1.5 years of platform
development, and since then I joined to develope the
market” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
5) Identity creation: (I,S)
“One of the guidelines I received was to act with
independence from the banks” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
6) Good previous infrastructures: (I,S)
“Banking infrastructure in Spain is very good. Redsys,
Cecabank, Iberpay allow banks to interact” – Ángel
Nigorra, Bizum
“Bizum manages resources and technologies provided
by external players, looking for integration, and the
Directory was developed ad hoc” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
7) Beyond competition: (I,S)
“Bizum is a project of collaboration and innovation” –
Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“In Europe not all initiatives have been collaborative”
– Lorena Poza, Bizum
8) Inclusive Project: (I)
“Bizum is universal, I mean from the beginning most
of Spanish Banks participated” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
“From the beginning we counted on more than 95%
market share” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“Bizum is composed by two types of actors: bank
entities and collaborators” – Lorena Poza, Bizum
9) Governance and decisions: (I,S)
“There is a representation of banks and normally
there is consensus, if not we make decisions by voting
in regular government commissions. That happened
only a few times” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“Task forces are integrated by members from Bizum,
Banks and collaborators…Those task forces are
organized by themes” – Lorena Poza, Bizum
1) Balance between collaboration and competition:
(I)
“Big banks prefer to reduce the base of cooperation
represented by Bizum because they have capacities to
create more differentiation, and the opposite with
smaller banks. That generates stress” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
2) Conflict of interest: (I)
“The more service Bizum provides, the more frictional
risks emerge” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“Changes from credit and debit cards towards other
solutions based on instant transfer” – Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
“In cases as ecommerce payment the interest conflict is
evident due the credit and debit cards” – Lorena Poza,
Bizum
“Bank entities have to offer new services in order to
compete effectively” – Lorena Poza, Bizum
“ING had to join Bizum due to the demand from their
customers” – Lorena Poza, Bizum
“For some banks Bizum could be perceived as a
portability tool among entities” – Inés Monguilot,
Kutxa Bank
3) Development of new cases of use: (I,S)
“For shops and ecommerce it is needed that a Bizum´s
bank account is involved” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
4) Each decision requires the participation and
involvement of all members (Banks): (I,S)
“Our advantage is at the same time a constraint factor
because it requires the involvement of all banks with
other services and priorities” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“Processors have to be certified and they support the
bank entities…they are two: Redsys and Cecabank” –
Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
“Processors can be replaced by other actors that are
unique” – Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
“To be a Bizum’s member now it´s mandatory to have a
bank licence in Spain” – Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
“In each bank entity there are specific people assigned
to support Bizum…normally with technical-innovation
profile” – Lorena Poza, Bizum
5) Bizum’s relevance was small in the beginning: (I,
S)
“Now banks receive value for being part of Bizum. We
have supported banks’own digitalization but in the
beginning it was a promise” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
6) Regional approach: (I)
“If a foreign bank acquires a Spanish one, that could be
a risk” – Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
7) Cryptocurrencies and blockchain as new
disruption elements: (I)
“The current system is not ready to manage those new
currencies” – Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum

addresses with their bank accounts, without any other intermediate
instrument (Fig. 3). The different modules are intermediate agents be­
tween banking entities, the different zones of authorities coming from
banking entities and technology supportive agents, and the bottlenecks
that are the technical or strategic issues in the relationships when
executing instant mobile payments.
Table 3 provides an overview of these components of an internal DBE
creation with a brief explanation of the pros and cons of each, illustrated
by quotes from the interview transcripts.
As the main critical factors to explain the set up of a DBE, we can list
the following, as already described by Baldwin (2019, 1): “platform
system reward modularity, distributed governance, risk taking, and autono­
mous decision-making, …”.
Digital technology shows the platform system reward modularity:
banking prosecution, transference, settlement and the directory of links
between mobile phone numbers and bank account codes. All of these
were the enablers of the final solution, whose main components were a
digital artefact in the form of methodologies, frameworks, models and
modeling languages (Senyo et al., 2019a). Distributed governance is
evident because Bizum comprises mostly banking entities with active

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support working under the coopetition paradigm. In other European
experiences, the coopetition working style did not work (De Reuver
et al., 2015). They illustrated that three big Dutch banks and three Dutch
telecom operators joined together in order to develop a trusted mobile
payment service. In the end, it did not work due to: different strategic
objectives and interests, conflicts, lack of dependencies and governance
issues, so the mobile payment platform was dissolved.
All incumbents pushed a free solution for users (Anderson, 2009) as
evidence of risk taking. Autonomous decision-making is deduced from
the common testimony of interviewed collaborators: “no Bank stopped
Bizum’s proposals from the beginning”, said Ángel Nigorra.
Bizum is not only the ecosystem’s brand, but a legal entity
comprising the main Spanish banking entities with its own governance
structure. Most decisions are made by consensus among the partners on
the board of directors. Bizum counts on an executive team to manage the
ecosystem and task forces (permanent and ad hoc) by themes (market­
ing, operations, etc.) in order to propose future evolution lines and how
to solve technical operational issues.
In the opinion of Ángel Nigorra: “this potential capacity was
perceived initially as a question mark among its own sponsors, the bank
entities. For them, payment based on credit cards was extensively
consolidated and a similar solution with the smartphone’s usability
advantages was a critical concern”. Fortunately, consideration of the
threat from pure digital players was stronger and the initial steps of this
ecosystem were continued. Bizum’s digital value generated for all
stakeholders is so evident that other risks for its development were also
neutralized. Among the main risks are customer portability among en­
tities, cybersecurity, cryptocurrencies, and exclusion of socio-
demographic generations. None of them were enough to stop the
emergent development of this ecosystem.
4.2. Value proposition and social impact
Between 2016 and 2019, the IX Report of Payment Methods Trends

Table 4
Customer adoption. Note: I: Supported by interviews; S: Supported by secondary sources.
Item Explanation Pros Cons

Customer Bizum has been adopted massively and quickly
adoption by more than 70% of the Spanish banking
population, starting with an educational process,
later virality, taking advantage of covid and
developing new usages, as ecommerce payments.
1) Customer centric approach from the first decisions: (I,
S)
“Banks decided not only to create the infrastructure for
immediate transfers but also a valuable service that improves
the user experience”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
2) Looking for satisfaction from the beginning: (I,S)
“The strategy was to focus on a niche to create critical mass
of satisfied users”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
3) Increasing cases of use: (I,S)
“First was P2P payments, later NGOs payments, by the end of
2020 we started with ecommerce and very recently with
lottery”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“We are open to introduce more proxys different from mobile
phone number: QR, for instance”– Fernando Rodríguez,
Bizum
“Innovation or cases of use could arise bottom up”– Lorena
Poza, Bizum
4) Viral effect: (I,S)
“There are two important factors: good and easy user
experience, and easier penetration due to banks’ support”–
Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“Our fast growth was due to the users’recommendations and
that explains why other generations have adopted the app, for
instance in families…additionally because it’s very easy to
use and to learn”– Lorena Poza, Bizum
“People use make a Bizum as a generic way to transfer
money”– Lorena Poza, Bizum
5) Good image: (I,S)
“From the beginning Bizum´s image was positive”– Ángel
Nigorra, Bizum
“We are thinking about how to present the brand in terms of
product”– Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
“Bank entities are in charge of communication with end
users, … later Bizum adopted an active role”– Lorena Poza,
Bizum
6) Support for shops and ecommerce: (I)
“We have regular meetings with shops and ecommerce and
we offer support to clarify doubts and we even offer
marketing resources”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“We count on more than 8000 shops already affiliated”–
Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
7) Behaviour change: (I,S)
“There is new demand that I can´t explain and probably
mobile device is the key”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
8) Confidence: (I)
“Confidence is superior to security, because you expect that
somebody will react if something happens”– Ángel Nigorra,
Bizum
“Users don´t have to give data to third parties”– Ángel
Nigorra, Bizum
9) Bank Population: (I,S)
“In Spain the bank population is bigger than 90%”–
Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
1) Lack of demand or end user awareness: (I)
“It must be recognized that Bizum has created the
demand, and for instance, nobody took the
smartphone to pay for a paddle tennis court and now
it´s very often”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
2) Competition: (I,S)
“It was necessary to open a niche in the market with the
case of uses in front of more consolidated
competitors”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
3) Change the target: (I)
“Initially I was told that my target was millenial but
after the first market research we confirmed that
people older than 35 years were our key users”– Ángel
Nigorra, Bizum
4) Direct contact with customers: (I)
“End customers have direct contractual relationship
with banks instead of Bizum”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
“In the beginning the decision was to support
established access channels as banks´apps, but who
knows if a new independent Bizum app could make
sense for situations where expenses are shared”–
Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
5) Time: (I)
“First million users took 15 months and now it’s only 6
weeks”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
6) Lack of awareness in new cases of use: (I)
“Most Bizum users don’t know that they can pay with
Bizum in shops”– Ángel Nigorrra, Bizum
7) Need for Spanish bank account: (I)
“We accept foreign phone numbers but it’s required to
count on a Spanish bank account code to operate with
Bizum”– Ángel Nigorra, Bizum
8) Operational limits: (I,S)
“We establish some limits as: <1000 euros per
transaction, no more than 2000 euros received/day,
and no more than 60 transactions/month. This is
controlled by Redsys”– Fernando Rodríguez, Bizum
“If you want to use Bizum, you require a bank account
in Spain”– Fernando Rodríguez
9) Negative perception associated with fraud: (I,S)
“Most of the cases are due to lack of knowledge about
how the transference works…. and that is our
responsibility”– Lorena Poza, Bizum

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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez
elaborated by Minsait (2019) collects some evidence of substantial
changes in digital payment behavior. There has been a reduction of the
relationship’s length with the main financial institution from 14.5 years
in 2018 to 12.6 years in 2019. Additionally, according to that report,
60% of the Spanish population thinks that bigtech could provide the
same or better financial service compared with traditional institutions.
This evidence of drastic changes was perceived by traditional banks as a
critical threat, and as a result, they decided to launch Bizum.
Although initially a defensive measure, eventually they implemented
an innovative instant mobile payment solution that shaped a digital
ecosystem with its own personality. Bizum’s value proposition is defined
as: payment solution through mobile in real time and account to ac­
count. From the marketing point of view, they state (Bizum’s website):
“If you carry a mobile, you carry money”. That value proposition is based
on five key attributes:
■ Instant. In less than 5 secs, the money is in your account.
■ Easy. Available in banking apps and other channels. It’s easy to use
with just a mobile phone.
■ Secure. Protection provided by the Spanish banking industry.
■ Comfortable. Fast, agile, without pre-loads, without knowing IBAN,
just the phone number of the recipient (or selecting the contact).
■ Any bank. Every client with an account in any of the member banks
and a mobile phone can be a user.
Once, the value proposition has been explained, it is very important
to identify the main factors of success in terms of adoption. The positive
network effect (Parker et al., 2016) created a huge user community,
including all digital generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millennial).
That was achieved based on security, ease and an outstanding smart­
phone user experience, which was a perfect product market fit in terms of
satisfied need (Blank, 2020) and generated virality among their own
users. As Lorena Poza said: “our customers use the popular expression ‘make
a bizum’, when they evoke instant payment through a smartphone”.
According to the EC’s final report, the most significant consumer
issues identified in the usage of platforms, are as follows:
a) Transparency and clarity of the legal nature of transactions. In P2P
platforms, although there is an orchestrator, the effective connection
is set between peers and does not clear the applicable rights and
responsibilities
b) The reliability of peer review, rating systems and accuracy of identity
information
Fig. 4. Evolution of Bizum’s user age, data expressed in percentages. Bizum internal documents.
9
Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330
c) The discrepancy between exclusion of platform responsibility and
liability for the performance of online P2P transactions and platform
practices
d) Access to redress for peer consumers and peer providers
e) Data use and data protection issues.
Another important characteristic is that online P2P platforms blur
the distinction between consumer and provider (European Commission
Final Report, 2017). In Bizum, any person who participates in the DBE
can be at the same time a sender and/or receiver of money.
Table 4 provides an overview of customer adoption factors with a
brief explanation of the pros and cons of each factor.
Demographically, Bizum´s penetration among the different digital
generations follows a normal distribution. Checking the data of Fig. 4, it
is evident that Bizum is not a digital solution only for millennials. Gen X
and Baby Boomers represent more than 50% of total users. Digital
instant payment solutions are adopted by people belonging to different
digital generations (Baby Boomers, Gen X, Millenials, Centenials)
despite the issues of app-based interfaces. Mobility is a key factor to
make possible instantaneity. The main issues are small displays, ads,
lack of pinch-zoom functionality, performance or poor navigation
(Abramovich, 2017)
In January 2021, there were more than 14 million Bizumers and
there has been fast growth from its origin in 2016 (Fig. 5). The fact of
using ‘Bizumers’ as the name of Bizum’s users can be considered as ev­
idence of the consolidation of the digital community. With this digital
identity, Bizum is highlighting the sentiment of belonging among its
current users and they are inviting new potential targets to join them.
During the first six months of lockdown due to COVID in 2020, 3.5
million new users joined Bizum. This shows the outstanding growth of
2020 over 2019, and at the same time it is proof of how this digital
solution was adopted to satisfy personal needs at a very critical moment.
In 2021, there are two important goals for the company: to achieve 20
million users and 18,000 ecommerce sites.
In order to understand better the relevance of Bizum in payment
needs within the Spanish Fintech ecosystem, other figures (Fig. 6) are
shown on Bizum´s website: https://bizum.es/en/data/ as follows:
5. Limitations and future research directions
Regarding limitations, we consider it worth mentioning that,
although the single case study approach has been ideal for analyzing the
phenomenon, we are aware it has several limitations related to the
sample selection, the amount of time that longitudinal research takes,
but especially related to statistical generalization (Campos-Blázquez
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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez
Fig. 5. Evolution of Bizum’s number of users, data expressed in millions of users. 2021 data corresponds to January. Bizum internal documents.
Fig. 6. Bizum’s KPI. Source: https://bizum.es/en/data/ (data on Aug, 18th, 2021).
et al., 2020). The single case study reduces the chances of using Yin’s
replication logic, compared with a multiple-case study. In this regard, it
is proposed as a line of future research to use Yin’s replication logic, both
in other cases with a similar context (literal replication) and in different
contexts (theoretical replication), with a view to achieving a greater
degree of transferability (Maxwell, 1996).
In addition, as there is a recognized lack of clear understanding of the
DBE concept (Senyo et al., 2019a), we call for future research towards an
integrated DBE definition.
6. Conclusions
In sum up, Bizum is not only an actual Fintech DBE, but it represents
one of those few cases of incumbents’ digital disruption with proven
success. Its size is huge for a country like Spain (> 16 millions of users in
Q2 2021) and it has formed a digital community with its own specific
identity: ‘bizumers’.
Our study has practical implications and it provides four interesting
contributions on the Fintech DBE topic. The first contribution is the
empirical evidence of a successful implementation of a DBE, allowed a
number of traditional banking entities to compete in a rapidly changing
market through a disruptive solution. Secondly, the network effect
developed on Bizum’s DBE justifies the great acceptance that it has as a
means of mobile payment between end users (P2P) and now other cases
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Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330
of use (ecommerce, NGOs payments). The third contribution is that,
along with the network effect, Bizum’s value proposition favors a deep
and quick transformation of payment habits among Spanish users
belonging to different generations (Boomers, Gen X, Millenials/Y, and
Centenials/Z).
Finally, we highlight the critical factors of Bizum’s DBE which
explain how it was built and why it was able to succeed by providing
digital value in a critical common need: payments. In summary, Bizum
solves technical or strategic bottlenecks within the coopetition envi­
ronment of its technical systems, where it operates as an orchestrator.
Author statement
All authors contributed equally to this work in all the stages: initial
idea, slection of the case, negotiation with Bizum for the final approval,
the theoretical review, the research method selection, the analysis of
inputs and acquired insights, and the final redaction of the manuscript.
As corresponding author (José María Visconti-Caparrós), I am respon­
sible for ensuring that the contents are accurate and agreed by all
authors.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank all those professionals from Bizum who have
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J.M. Visconti-Caparrós and J.R. Campos-Blázquez Technological Forecasting & Social Change 175 (2022) 121330

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José María Visconti-Caparrós is Expert Council Member of the digital innovation
consulting company Opinno. He has an extensive background in strategy, marketing
(including digital marketing), digital projects and agile methodologies (Lean 6 sigma),
new venture development, digital business, and corporate partnership and strategic alli­
ances. He is also director of the MMD, MDM and MDB programs at ESIC Business &
Marketing School, Spain. His research interests include digital business ecosystems (DBEs),
business model innovation of digital platforms, digital business transformation, and the
development of a culture of digital organization. He is PhD candidate in economics and
business administration from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.
Juan Ramón Campos-Blázquez is the co-founder and director of the innovation agency
Stigmergy. He has an extensive background in innovation leadership, innovation processes
(Design Thinking and Lean-Startup), agile methodologies, new venture development,
business planning, and partnership and strategic alliances. He is also director of the EMBA
and MBA programs at ESIC Business & Marketing School, Spain. His research interests
include open innovation, business model innovation, agile methodologies, and the
development of a culture of innovation in firms. He holds a PhD in economics and inno­
vation management from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Spain.