Payair – Reaching for critical mass

The mobile payments industry has in recent years experienced large growth and rapid changes. Several different actors are trying to capture the market, to get enough users of their system to reach critical mass. This study investigates how a small Swedish mobile payments company have utilized its business network in their strive to reach critical mass, both in their domestic market and internationally. The study intends to describe how the company has developed its network and which stages of the network development that have been the most important. We utilize the ARA-model to analyze the business network and the Uppsala Model and born global theory to define how the company has internationalized. Our main results indicate that our case company has the mindset of a born global but the particulars of the industry have forced it to internationalize following the Uppsala Model. The development of the business network have to a large part been dependent of the initial activities since this builds the credibility needed to work with large actors. Moreover the business network is found to not only help the company, but to be essential for their plans on reaching critical mass.