Many countries across the globe are engaged in efforts to promote a cashless society. In India, there is a strong top-down push by the government and the private sector for mobile payments. In this work, we examine the benefits and pitfalls people perceive in using mobile payments for customer-merchant transactions. Through interviews with 19 customers and 15 merchants across rural, periurban, and urban India, we explore people's awareness about mobile payment systems, perceived trade-offs among different payment methods, and the security, privacy, and utility barriers in its adoption and use. Overall, we found that customers were interested in adopting mobile payments for referral rewards and sign-up incentives, but were hesitant to regularly use them, whereas merchants saw mobile payments as an unnecessary burden for their business. We discuss the nuanced views of customers and merchants, and offer recommendations to address the barriers in the use of mobile payments for customer-to-merchant transactions.
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