One challenge for firms seeking to develop new services is to understand the conditions likely
to affect rates of adoption. Understanding relative degrees of “adoption readiness” provides
innovators with information to choose market segments and indicates opportunities to influence
adoption environments. This paper considers these issues through the case of digital money, a service
innovation some claim to have the potential to provide major economic and social benefits. However,
there is little research into the adoption readiness of countries upon which firms can base their new
service development decisions. Defined as “currency exchange by electronic means”, we
conceptualize digital money as a socio-technical system, and propose a Digital Money Readiness
Index. This composite index integrates institutional, financial, technological, economic, industrial and
social attributes to measure adoption readiness. We identify four stages of readiness and
systematically analyze the factors that drive under or over adoption of digital money technologies.