The Impact of Blockchain Technology on Business Models in the Payments Industry

Abstract

Because of its potentially disruptive influence on business models (BMs), blockchain technology has sparked a lively debate among researchers. Our Delphi study sets out to explore the impact of blockchain in payments, which represents a major cornerstone of banking and the cradle of this technology. The results, grouped around four areas of thoughts, indicate that blockchain allows the offering of new services and renders some of the current ones obsolete. This consequently impacts the financial structure of firms in the payments industry and further generates great potential for new BMs while making some existing ones obsolete. Eventually, new players, which are better able to leverage the po-tential of blockchain, will give a strong impulse to this development. Our findings contribute to the literature by providing new insights about the impact of innova-tive technologies on BMs and have further practical implications by presenting a better understanding of future BMs in payments.