The worldwide mobile payments market is expected to have reached “$ 171.5 billion as a total in 2012, with a 61.9 % increase compared to 2011” and a constant annual forecasted growth of 42% until 2016 according to (Christy, 2012, para.1). In this fast growing market, there are two major categories identified, according to (Cluckey, 2011, p.1 ) : proximity and remote payments. For the mobile proximity case, NFC is a technology that has seen a tremendous hype in the last years. However, barcode and QR code are also relevant and are addressed in the analysis section as well. NFC is a set of wireless standards based technology, that functions in short distance radio frequency identification (RFID) of approximately 4 inches and that can be applied in areas from simple data transfers to payments, by replacing credit card, according to (Hasoo, Lee, & Heekuck Oh, 2013). The same source mentions that the protocol is extremely secure, by granting privacy of the user and in the same time enabling personalized services, fact seen as very suitable for its usage in mobile payments services. Thus, in mobile proximity payments, NFC is a set of standards that enable device-to-device communication between mobile phones and other pieces of equipment, such as POS terminals. The thesis focuses mainly on NFC “self-organized” phone-based schemes, (J. Ondrus & Pigneur, 2005, p.2), owned by players such as Google, PayPal and A Handset Manufacturer that are looking forward to enter the market from outside and thus cause disruption in relation to the already existing initiatives, the “operator-driven ones” (J. Ondrus & Pigneur, 2005, p.2), where the banks and MNOs take the lead together. In the current thesis, the concept of the operator-driven models is extended to that of collaboration models(Smart Card Alliance, 2008), referred here as the collaborative models. These type of models are already working according to the functional standardized “four corners card payment working model” (LLC, 2010, p.1) and have the banks as leaders in network in charge of payments, and the mobile network operators, responsible for storing the payment credentials in the mobile handsets. According to (LLC, 2010), the four corners card payment model links the buyer and the merchants through their issuing and acquiring banks, by making use of the card schemes companies (ex. Visa, MasterCard, Maestro). Thus, these so called “disruptive or insurgent players” (Jan Ondrus & Lyytinen, 2011,p.2) have different organizational models compared to what is considered the traditional, reference one, in their attempt to step in the in-store payment by making use of NFC or other proximity payments technologies. Thus, companies such as Google, PayPal, and A Handset Manufacturer might find themselves in a position to exploit at maximum their resources and chose suitable strategies in relation to the other actors to gain support for initiatives and so reach success, by giving a high value for the network they are part of. Taking into account this problem, the research question to be answered is the following: What kind of network strategies should new-coming players in the mobile proximity payment market Google, PayPal and A Handset Manufacturer deploy in relation to the most relevant actors in their networks, in order to ensure their successfulness in the international market? For answering the research question, the author has created a theoretical framework that is applied to reach the research objective. It is important to emphasize that when referring to strategies, the researcher refers to certain manners the owners of the three disruptive ecosystems should treat the relation with the most important actors in their network in order to obtain support and obtain “multiple sourcing” for their models (Bruijn & Ten Heuvelhof, 2008, p.41). That is why he names them “network strategies”. For this, it should be noted that the researcher considers that the more support in the network an owner of a certain value proposition has, the higher the chances for reaching success are. That is because he views success mainly from the perspective of the value delivered inside the value network. That means that certain “blocking parties” or parties with “diffuse power position” (Bruijn & Ten Heuvelhof, 2008, p.40-41) should be dealt with in such a manner that more support is built with them and blockage is avoided. On the other hand, parties with “production power” should be kept close to the value proposition and involved in key decisions and benefits sharing. In order to measure the potential success of the disruptors and, based on that, derive the degree of successfulness of the strategies, the researcher has created a successfulness indicator, based on a network approach. This indicator measures success by taking into account the roles of the most important actors in the network (ex. how many supporters, blockers). The research approach taken to solve the problem is that of comparative analysis, between the roles that the most important actors (ex. banks, MNOs, card payment scheme) have in the new entrants’ ecosystems (Google, PayPal and A Handset Manufacturer) vis-à-vis their considered, static roles in the collaborative, traditional, operator-centric model. The latter is used as a reference, because it is considered in this research as the traditional, established model of performing mobile payments, as being based on the already standardized four corners model. In addition, all the critical parties seem to align their interests and thus increase the value for the all network in this case, thus labeling this model as Highly successful. As this latter model is considered a reference, it is the change in roles for the most important actors in the three disruptive networks compared to it that is relevant for giving insights regarding successfulness and then right network strategies that should be recommended. In order to be able to gather information about the case studies analyzed and then clarify the roles of the parties and then also quantify success, the researcher makes use of a business model based on platform theory called VISOR. For the collaborative model, the researcher uses a simple stakeholder analysis. As a manner of gathering data, the researcher has performed two sets of interviews. The first set was focused on gathering information about the business models of the disruptors and of the collaborative case. For this, he retrieved information from 7 consultants working for THE CLIENT, as well as consulting specialized materials about mobile payments. The second set of interviews was used in order to clarify the roles of the most important actors (ex. banks, card payment schemes and banks), by involving 7 experienced experts belonging to the entire mobile payments field. This set of interviews was recorded, transcribed and coded. The conclusions of the research are that Google scores “Low” as successfulness potential, PayPal “Low towards Medium”, whereas A Handset Manufacturer’s model is labeled as “High”. This is placed in the context where the reference, the collaborative model, is also labeled as High. That justification of these results is given by the fact that whereas Google has 3 major blockers and no supporters in its network on its Google Wallet’s product and PayPal has only 2, but still no major supporters, A Handset Manufacturer’s model is backed by 3 strong parties and 2 that seem possible to be activated. Thus, the researcher argues that the network strategies of A Handset Manufacturer’s are potentially more successful than Google’s and PayPal’s. Google is advised to bring banks and card payments schemes closer to the Google Wallet initiative, PayPal to strengthen the relationship with the banks for its close loop mobile in-store payment model, whereas A Handset Manufacturer’s should continue to focus on the relationship with the banks and build scale.