The approximately 10 year history of mobile payment services is characterized by numerous failures and promising but yet uncertain future. Against this background we take a look at why a dominant design has not emerged for this payment services market in Finland, despite dozens of efforts and continuous user interest even when necessary technologies, competencies, attitudes, regulation and opportunities have existed. We developed a multidisciplinary framework to answer this question. The framework integrates the constructs and findings of earlier research on the emergence of dominant designs with the findings of the case, for which data was collected over five years. We also extended earlier research by analyzing the issue from the era of ferment to present.