Drivers of the Consumers Adoption of Fintech Services

Abstract

Aim/Purpose: This study aimed to explore the impact of environmental drivers and trust on consumers’ adoption of Fintech services in the Jordanian context. It had also evaluated the mediating role of trust on the relation between environmental drivers and consumers adoption of Fintech services. Background: The reviewed studies on Fintech adoption demonstrated a lack of focus on the role of external or environmental drivers on consumers’ intentions to use and continue to use of Fintech services. Amongst the analyzed studies, the majority had examined the role of consumers perception of services usefulness and ease of use while few had included some environmental variables within the investigated variables such as social influence and government support. Furthermore, shortage of Fintech adoption related research in the developing countries, especially the Jordanian context was noted. Methodology: The study conceptual model was derived from Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) and Technological Personal Environmental (TPE) framework. This study was a quantitative one that employed survey method to empirically address its research questions and test the proposed hypotheses. Jordanian residents over the age of 18 who are familiar with Fintech were targeted, and convenience sampling was applied to get representative sample. Data was assembled from 323 respondents using an online questionnaire. Partial Least Squares Structure Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to analyze the gathered data through SMART-PLS software. Contribution: This article adds to the existing literature on multiple stands, as it adds to literature related to Fintech adoption, as well as the interaction between consumer environment and their level of adoption. It also enriches the limited literature on the influence of COVID-19 to drive consumer usage of innovative services. Moreover, it supplements the scarce literature on Fintech adoption in the Jordanian settings. Findings: The main findings revealed the positive influence of both environmental drivers and trust as predictors of consumer intention to use Fintech services. It had also asserted the positive mediating effect of trust on the relationship amongst environmental drivers and consumer usage intent. Recommendations for Practitioners: By understanding the importance of consumer environment and trust on encouraging consumer to adopt Fintech services, governments, policy makers and practitioners can utilize this knowledge to adopt their offered services. They need to work on enhancing the technological infrastructure, as well as establishing general technological knowledge. They also need to highlight the role of Fintech service in fighting Covid-19, by adhering to the social distancing rules. Moreover, they need to guarantee the security and reliability of the developed services to increase their level of trust in the offered services. Recommendation for Researchers: This research has confirmed the positive influence of consumer environment represented by social influence, government support, technological readiness, and COVID-19 on their adoption of Fintech services. It has also established the mediating influence of consumer trust on the relation between environmental drivers and consumer intent to use Fintech services. This area is unexplored and needs more validation. Impact on Society: By understanding the factors affecting the Jordanian society in adopting Fintech services, this research provides set of recommendation to the Jordanian government and policy makers that can lead for more adoption of the developed Fintech services, which in turn would lead to better services provided to the society as well as increasing the financial inclusion level in the Jordanian society. Future Research: Future research can explore other environmental variables that were not included in the current research. Future research can also investigate the moderating effect of personal attributes such as consumer’s demographics, or more personal attributes such as self-efficacy, inherit innovativeness or risk aversion. It can also examine the moderating effect of financial literacy and/ or technological background.

Digital Financial Inclusion: COVID-19 Impacts and Opportunities

“…Therefore, the calculated results were only partially explained by the COVID-19 factor (in particular, the presence of quarantine restrictions, the impossibility of using financial services offline, and the desire of people to use safer methods for health payments in pandemic conditions). For example, based on empirical data, the study in [21] proved that technological readiness became the main factor in the use of FinTech services during the pandemic. The positive impact of COVID-19 on people's willingness to use FinTech services was also significant because it formed the belief that using FinTech services would reduce the spread of COVID-19 and offer protection from the disease.…”

Enhancing insight into fintech adoption through VOSViewer: A bibliometric exploration

“…Fintech is defined as an organization that combines innovative business models and technology to create, improve and disrupt financial services. In line with this, fintech is also described as the use of technology to build or form new financial services to make them easier, affordable and safer for their users (Alhajjaj & Ahmad 2022). Users can perform various services, such as making payments, transferring funds, taking loans, buying insurance, managing assets and making investments, using fintech platforms such as mobile payments, P2P lending and crowdfunding.…”

“…Globally, the adoption of fintech by individuals has only reached 64%, while only 25% of MSMEs have adopted fintech (Ernest & Young 2019). Even though the level of awareness of individuals who do not adopt fintech toward more than one fintech is found to be very high (Alhajjaj and Ahmad 2022). This makes the topic of the drivers of fintech adoption interesting to observe.…”