Exploring the adoption of mobile payments: a hybrid literature review and future research agenda

Abstract Mobile payments are transforming the world of transactions, and their implications have attracted considerable academic interest. As a result, ongoing literature reviews have been conducted to consolidate and present the development of studies on mobile payments. However, most of these literature reviews have focused on consumer adoption, leaving aside other actors and post-adoption behaviors. This review addresses this gap by providing a detailed analysis of the literature based on a hybrid review of 150 peer-reviewed articles published on mobile payments between 2004 and mid-2025, using the scientific procedures protocol and the fundamentals of systematic literature reviews (SPAR-4-SLR) to collect relevant articles, and the structured theory-context-characteristics-methods (TCCM) review framework to analyze them. The results reveal the need for more studies on peer-to-peer (P2P and C2B) payments, mobile payment adoption in developing economies, changes in consumption patterns, cultural contrasts, and socioeconomic impact and identify emerging areas of payments such as buy now, pay later (BNPL), facial recognition payment systems (FRPS), and integrated payment systems. The scope of the current literature is still limited. This review identifies relevant factors in the study of mobile payments, which, in a subsequent study, will be empirically quantified and the influence of culture analyzed. Based on the findings of this study, some priority lines of research are proposed that may contribute to the development of the area.