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Topics covered by the case include: strategic management processes; and strategies, especially of a platform business.

The case is suitable for use in final-year undergraduate business/management degree programs and MBA or MSc in Management programs. The case can be utilized in courses such as strategic management and management of innovation. For MBA and MSc in management programs, the case can also be utilized in organization theory and design and organizational management, or any courses that cover topics of strategic management and management of innovation.

By December 2010, the e-Pay terminal system was one of the most successful payment platforms in Malaysia. This business, which was launched in 1999, was an electronic prepaid mobile phone reload value distribution system known as e-Pay; it contributed about 80 per cent of the company's annual revenue. Over the past 10 years, e-Pay's terminal system had evolved into a comprehensive payment platform serving many providers on one side and end customers on the other side. However, since the past two years, the company has been facing pressures from their biggest customers on the provider side of its platform, the three giant telecommunication companies (telcos), which had moved to directly deliver reload values to their prepaid subscribers, bypassing e-Pay as the payment intermediary. On the customer side, the number of prepaid subscribers switching to postpaid services was increasing, and this threatened e-Pay's main source of revenue in the prepaid market. In response to this, the company added new service providers to its platform and launched multi-functional cashier machines with reload credits facility. By December 2010, as the market sunk into subscription saturation, the two founders of the company became deeply concerned about the company's future. They wondered if the problems would hinder their company from becoming a dominant payment player in Asia. This case presents an opportunity to discuss strategic posturing of a payment platform company operating in a mobile phone market which was mainly controlled by the telecommunication companies.

Understanding of strategic management process and related analysis enable case analysts to apply these concepts in many business situations involving strategy formulation and implementation.

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Presents a case study of the Library Technology Group Helpdesk at the University of Wisconsin covering the procedures, methods and tools used to support workflow efficiency and productivity. Shows how some of these assist the internal operations of the helpdesk as a technical support centre and service resource for library staff campus wide whilst others are used directly by library staff and departments in their daily work but are supported by the helpdesk. Provides a technical overview of remote reloading of electronic library workstations.

The Greater China region (China, Taiwan and Hong Kong) has more than 1.2 billion people, about one fifth of the world’s total population. This incredibly large market continues to modernize rapidly, and over the last five years, the region has maintained a very high economic growth rate in comparison to the rest of the world. The combination of market size and economic growth makes Greater China the most promising place in the world for Internet products and services. China, Taiwan and Hong Kong recognize the opportunities and via public and private initiatives are investing in the development of information technology (IT) and the Internet infrastructure. This paper outlines the key electronic commerce (EC) trends and events in the region. Further, the research analyzes the current impediments to Internet commerce in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong and provides strategy and directions for the region’s EC development.

This paper is to investigate a Web‐based engineering approach to enable engineers to use, share, and simulate effectively and efficiently design and manufacturing data through the World Wide Web. The enabling techniques to implement such an approach are critically discussed with an example based on a tolerancing application and two Java‐based machining simulators for e‐manufacturing purposes, as well as an example of real‐time 3D implementation. The outcome of this research is for helping designers and manufacturing engineers to be able accurately to make the right decisions for their respective purposes.

Smart card-based E-payment systems are receiving increasing attention as the number of implementations is witnessed on the rise globally. Understanding of user adoption behavior of E-payment systems that employ smart card technology becomes a research area that is of particular value and interest to both IS researchers and professionals. However, research interest focuses mostly on why a smart card-based E-payment system results in a failure or how the system could have grown into a success. This signals the fact that researchers have not had much opportunity to critically review a smart card-based E-payment system that has gained wide support and overcome the hurdle of critical mass adoption. The Octopus in Hong Kong has provided a rare opportunity for investigating smart card-based E-payment system because of its unprecedented success. This research seeks to thoroughly analyze the Octopus from technology adoption behavior perspectives.

Cultural impacts on adoption behavior are one of the key areas that this research posits to investigate. Since the present research is conducted in Hong Kong where a majority of population is Chinese ethnicity and yet is westernized in a number of aspects, assuming that users in Hong Kong are characterized by eastern or western culture is less useful. Explicit cultural characteristics at individual level are tapped into here instead of applying generalization of cultural beliefs to users to more accurately reflect cultural bias. In this vein, the technology acceptance model (TAM) is adapted, extended, and tested for its applicability cross-culturally in Hong Kong on the Octopus. Four cultural dimensions developed by Hofstede are included in this study, namely uncertainty avoidance, masculinity, individualism, and Confucian Dynamism (long-term orientation), to explore their influence on usage behavior through the mediation of perceived usefulness.

TAM is also integrated with the innovation diffusion theory (IDT) to borrow two constructs in relation to innovative characteristics, namely relative advantage and compatibility, in order to enhance the explanatory power of the proposed research model. Besides, the normative accountability of the research model is strengthened by embracing two social influences, namely subjective norm and image. As the last antecedent to perceived usefulness, prior experience serves to bring in the time variation factor to allow level of prior experience to exert both direct and moderating effects on perceived usefulness.

The resulting research model is analyzed by partial least squares (PLS)-based Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach. The research findings reveal that all cultural dimensions demonstrate direct effect on perceived usefulness though the influence of uncertainty avoidance is found marginally significant. Other constructs on innovative characteristics and social influences are validated to be significant as hypothesized. Prior experience does indeed significantly moderate the two influences that perceived usefulness receives from relative advantage and compatibility, respectively. The research model has demonstrated convincing explanatory power and so may be employed for further studies in other contexts. In particular, cultural effects play a key role in contributing to the uniqueness of the model, enabling it to be an effective tool to help critically understand increasingly internationalized IS system development and implementation efforts. This research also suggests several practical implications in view of the findings that could better inform managerial decisions for designing, implementing, or promoting smart card-based E-payment system.

This paper aims to compare the prepaid card laws/regulations in Nigeria, the UK, the USA and India with the aim of determining the best approach to regulating prepaid cards, that is the approach that promotes financial inclusion and also makes the product less attractive for money laundering.

This paper relies mainly on primary and secondary data drawn from the public domain. It also relies on documentary research.

This paper makes the following findings and recommendations: Nigeria has the best approach to regulating providers of prepaid cards. Nigeria’s approach could foster financial inclusion and at the same time mitigate the money laundering risks associated with prepaid cards. Nigeria’s approach is not too strict like the Indian approach and it is not too relaxed like the UK and the USA approach. Operators, including mobile/telecommunications operators, wishing to operate money transfer schemes in Nigeria are allowed to do so with approval from the Central Bank of Nigeria and in strict conjunction with licensed deposit-taking banks or financial institutions. The UK, the USA and India are recommended to adopt Nigeria’s approach. The UK and the USA have the best approach to regulating agents of prepaid cards. Both countries require prepaid card providers to maintain a current list of agents and make it available to the relevant authorities upon request. The approach allows regulatory agencies to effectively monitor and supervise prepaid card agents. India and Nigeria are advised to clarify their approach regarding the regulation of prepaid card agents. The prepaid card laws/regulations of those countries should be modified to specify if the agent of a prepaid card provider is required to be licensed or registered by a competent authority or if the prepaid card provider (the principal) is required to maintain an updated list of agents which must be made accessible to a designated competent authority, when requested. The new changes will afford regulatory authorities the opportunity to effectively monitor and supervise prepaid card agents. India’s approach to thresholds would preclude most individuals in the intended target market from accessing basic financial products, as most people typically do not have residential addresses that could be confirmed by reference to formal documentation. India should adopt the “risk-based approach” and not the “wholesale de-risking approach”.

Given their low-risk characteristics, closed-loop cards, specifically cards which do not allow reloads or withdrawals, remain outside the scope of this paper.

Although there have been researchers who adopted the comparative approach like Jean J Luyat and Will Cain, the comparative approach adopted by those researchers was not detailed enough and also was not aimed at seeking to answer the research question in Section 1 of this paper. Both writers focused on only the aspect of financial inclusion making the whole research a one-sided approach. Jean J Luyat focused on “how regulation had an impact on the development of prepaid cards in Japan and Europe”. He was able to discover that prepaid cards were growing rapidly in Japan but not gaining acceptance as a payment method in the European Union (EU) and France. He aligned such growth in Japan to different factors including regulation. He stated that Japan had a simple and flexible regulatory framework compared to the EU and France which have a complex regulatory system with strict prudential requirements. Nothing was said about the money laundering aspect of such regulation and neither was anything said about thresholds and other optional recommendations canvased by the Financial Action Task Force. The Electronic Money Directive referred to by Jean J Luyat has already been repealed and a second Electronic Money Directive is in place. A comparative approach is adopted in this research seeking to compare the approach in Nigeria with that of the UK, the USA and India. Each of these countries adopted different approaches. The results are to help answer the research question in Section 1 of this paper. The countries were selected on the basis of how strict their regulatory regime is. India’s regulatory regime is the strictest while the UK and the USA are the most lenient. Nigeria is caught in between strict/lenient.

Electronic commerce has been recognised as a source of fundamental change to the conduct of business. Exploitation by business of this innovative approach to payments will necessitate wide‐scale adoption of new processes and technologies and may require new thinking on how organizations adopt innovations. Primarily, these innovations will be interactive and inter‐organizational, i.e. a successful cash substitute will require the concurrent participation of many different organizations, as well as consumers. Current theoretical models of adoption may not cater for this type of innovation. This paper compares four diverse pilot implementations of smart‐card payment systems with Rogers’ (1995) attributes of innovations, adoption processes and adoption decision approaches for organizations. In general, Rogers’ models do not reflect the levels of complexity and diversity found in practice. Extensions of the models are proposed.