Adoption of financial technology services for financial inclusion

. Technological advances have revolutionized financial sector leading to financial inclusion. However, there was a little focus on financial technology services in India. The present research intents to study the influences on financial technology services and the influence of fintech services on financial inclusion. Data were obtained from 258 respondents who use various fintech services. SEM was employed to analyze data. The study finds that ease of use, usefulness, trust, social influence, personal innovativeness and convenience shown a positive effect on usage beahaviour of fintech services. Further, adoption of financial technology services exerted a positive effect on financial inclusion. Present study offers implications for research and academia


Introduction
With the amalgamation of technology and products related to finance, fintech services offers varied products such as online payments, lending, insurance, savings and investment.Financial technology also referred to as fintech has changed the way the financial institutions operate and do business.Fintech services presently having 2 percent share of $12.5 trillion global market and expected to grow at 7 percent having 25 percent by 2030 (BCG (2023).While fintech industry expected to grow at 31 percent CAGR from 2021 to 2025 to boost the economy.Research on fintech services in at two folds.First, its evolution, growth and contribution to the financial industry.Secondly, what factors leading users to fintech adoption.Fintech services refers the processes and systems how fintech consumers access and utilize fintech services.Though fintech services are growly rapidly in India and fintech technology is relatively new.Research on fintech acceptance is scanty.Acceptance of fintech services is low due to several barriers.The present research intends study factors leading to fintech adoption.Well-established technology acceptance model applied to study behavioural intention towards various technology.The current study tries to examine factors affecting fintech adoption.

Literature review and hypotheses development 2.1 Technology acceptance model (TAM)
With the advent of new technologies in finance sector, studies on factors influencing the innovative technologies is imperative.Previous research adopted many research models to research technology acceptance across varied contexts.Many established models were adopted to study the acceptance of technology-based products/services.TAM has been extensively used in research.TAM was propounded by Davis (1989).TAM is one of the popular models to study the reasons for using a technology (Bailey et al., 2022;Zheng & 2020).According to TAM, two factors -perceived ease of use and perceived usefulnessinfluence usage of technology.Although these two variables predict usage adoption of various different technologies additional variables needs to be added with the support of previous literature.Based on literature, current study adopts TAM with trust, convenience, personal innovativeness and social influence to study fintech services adoption.

Perceived ease of use (EOU)
It is conceptualized as "the extent to which an individual believes that using a particular system will be free of effort" (Davis, 1989).People choose to use any technology when it is easy to operate.In other words, the more complex a technology the less the individuals use.The more difficult it is to use technology, the less desire to use it.With reference to fintech, it is the ease with which an individual adopts various financial technology based services.EOU has shown positive effect in case of smart watch (Dutot et al., 2019); in-store retail technologies (Kim et al., 2017).EOU is a critical aspect in embracing fintech (Huei et al., 2018).Research study by Won-jun (2018) with 224 respondents in Korea shown a positive effect on EOU on adoption of financial technology services.H1: Perceived ease of use has a positive effect on adoption of fintech services.

Perceived usefulness (PU)
PU is explained as "the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance."(Davis, 1989).It is reliance an individual upon a technology to improve his/her performance.People expect to use a specific technology when it is useful to them.Extensive research evidenced a positive effect of PU on adoption intention for mobile learning (Chavoshi & Hamidi, 2019); mobile wallet (Singh et al., 2020).Further, Sa'diyah (2021) proved a positive effect of PU on financial technology acceptance.Won-jun (2018) conducted a research study with 224 sample size and concluded a significant effect of PU on fintech usage.H2: Perceived usefulness has a positive effect on adoption of fintech services.

Trust
Trust refers to the reputation of a business firm.Building and maintaining trust among the customers is a critical aspect of a success of an organisation.Trust is defined as the important actions performed by one party to create belief from one party in another party (Mayer, Davis & Schoorman, 1995).It is the belief one party has over the other party.Research revealed that trust has been a vital factor in technology acceptance (Slade et al., 2015;Alalwan et al., 2017).A study by Nangin et al. (2020) with 100 respondents in Jakartha has shown a significant effect of trust on fintech usage.Haqqi & Suzianti (2020) reported a significant association between trust and fintech acceptance.H3: Trust has a positive effect on adoption of fintech services.

Social influence
SI is explained "the extent to which an individual perceives that important others believe he or she should apply the new system".Venkatesh et al. (2003, p. 450).Financial technology based services are relatively new in India.Users get influenced by their friends, colleagues, opinion leaders when they adopt new technologies.Extensive research has been proved positive effect of social influence for mobile shopping applications (Chopdar et al., 2018).Research shown social influence predictor of fintech acceptance (Xie et al., 2021).Singh, Sahni & Kovid (2020) researched among 439 users of fintech products and indicated a positive influence of SI on fintech usage.H4: Social influence has a positive effect on adoption of fintech services.

Personal innovativeness (PI)
It is an individual's tendency and openness to experiment with usage of novel technology.People with innovativeness mindset likely to accept new technologies more compared to others Agarwal and Prasad (1998).It is a sort of risk taking ability of an individual to adopt new technologies.Personal innovativeness is a critical factor enable people to embrace latest technologies.Research shown PI is a vital predictor to accept latest technology for internet technology (Lu et al., 2005).Research shown personal innovativeness is a key factor in the adoption of internet services (Lu et al., 2005).PI shown a significant influence on acceptance of fintech Tun-Pin et al. (2019).With respect to financial technology services, research study by Wirani et al. (2022) among Indonesian borrowers proved a positive influce on PI acceptance on fintech.H5: Personal innovativeness has a positive effect on adoption of fintech services.

Convenience
Convenience is a multidimensional concept influences in the adoption of technology.Convenience is discussed from various dimensions such as time saving, available place, (Brown, 1989).Time convenience explains the time a user saves in acquiring product or using a service.Place convenience is place convenient to buy a product or service (Brown, 1989).Convenience reduces effort and time required to attain a product.Convenience

Fintech adoption and financial inclusion
The emerging fintech paved a way to financial inclusion across India.Financial technology services meet the requirements of population thus contributes financial inclusion Shekhar Lele (2023).Previous research studied the association between fintech and financial inclusion (Kanga et 2022) executed a research with 6050 people in rural India and indicated a significant assocaiton with fintech adoption as well financial inclusion.H7: Fintech adoption has a positive effect on financial inclusion.

Research method
This section initially deliberate the sample.Further, it elaborates the measurement scales used for data collection.

Sample
Structured survey method was adopted to obtain data.Data was captured using five point Likert scale.Data were captured using a survey questionnaire.Respondents were chosen from urban households based on convenience mode.600 respondents were approached to collect data on people using fintech.279 data were gathered with 46.5 percent response rate.From this a final sample 258 was arrived.21 invalid and incomplete responses were discarded.Table I shows the characteristics of sample.SEM using AMOS software was considered hypothesized relationships testing and to validate model.

Measures
Measurement scales were taken from well-established research studies after a thorough scrutiny.However, they were reasonably changed for matching objectives of research.EOU and PU both were culled out based on research by Venkatesh et al. (2012).The concept trust extracted from Gefen et al. (2003).The construct social influence extracted from from Wang and Lin (2011).Personal innovativeness was taken from a scale devised by He et al., (2018).Convenience was measured based on a study by Childers et al., (2001).Adoption intention was taken from Hsu and Lu (2004).Finally, financial inclusion was taken from studies of Subramanian (1994); Demir et al. (2022).II, most of the fintech users aware of fintech services through their friends and others.48.84 per cent of fintech users have been using for the past three years.Among the fintch services UPI payments top in the usage as 48.84 customers are using fintech services.Majority people utilize fintech at least once a week.

Discussion
An extensive research framework was developed and empirically tested.Results demonstrated ease of use exerted a positive effect on fintech adoption which is in congruent from a study by Won-jun (2018).PU has shown a positive influence on fintech usage.This is similar to the results of a study by Won-jun (2018).Trust complements with the result by Haqqi & Suzianti (2020).Social influence corroborates with study by Singh, Sahni & Kovid (2020).
Personal innovativeness matches with the outcome of Wirani et al. (2022).Convenience is closely related with the output by Zhang & Kim (2020).Finally, fintech adoption has shown a positive effect on financial inclusion which is same as the research results from Goswami et al. (2022)

Implications
The findings reveal the signification of adoption intention of financial technology services.Financial technology services are relatively new in India and the adoption levels are low despite the merits of fintech services.The study focused to asses the influences leading to acceptance of financial technology services.Further, the present study adopts wellestablished technology acceptance Davis (1989) model as the background for current research with additional variables to examine the acceptance levels of financial technology services.Variables for study were considered basing on extensive literature survey.It assessed the comprehensive research model empirically by obtaining data from urban households of India.Fintech services witnessed a surge in the recent past.The output of present research enable firms to comprehend thereby frame strategies to implement financial technology programs.Findings revealed that trust is critical for acceptance of fintech.Organizations need to find ways to build and continue to maintain it for long term growth.Convenience saves time and effort to embrace fintech.Fintech services providers need to upgrade fintech services for faster and efficient payments.Users tend to use fintech services as they find them more easy.User-friendly features can be added for superior experience and long-term usage.

Limitations of the study
Current research has few lacunas.For instance, information was accumulated by employing convenience sampling technique from urban households of India where it lacks generalizability.Further research may be carried among rural users of fintech services for assessing present research framework.The current research was quantitative and crosssectional; studies may adopt mixed methods -qualitative and quantitative -for better results.Longitudinal studies may yield different results.The present study considered 258 sample which cannot generalize Financial technology services are relatively new in India hence the study was conducted with the foundation of TAM with additional variables based on literature review.Future studies may embrace other models like UTAUT, TPB, innovation diffusion theory etc. present study was from the context of fintech users.The respondents for the study included fintech users.However, there is a need to conduct studies from the perspective of fintech service providers.

Conclusion
Information and computer technology has changed the way financial services offered.The study aimed understand influences of fintech acceptance.and financial inclusion in India.TAM was considered as the basis for the study.This study included TAM variables with personal innovativeness, convenience and trust.The statistical results predicted 57% variance in adoption of fintech services among Indians.Results indicated a positive effect of EOU, P and perceived usefulness along with trust, SI, PI and convenience on adoption of fintech.In addition, adoption of fintech illustrated positive effect on financial inclusion.
predicts purchase decision in various contexts.Shankar & Rishi (2020) performed a study among 442 mobile banking customers and shown a favourable association on acceptance net banking.Convenience influences accepting technologies like mobile technology (Chang et al., 2012); online payment (Mombeuil & Uhde, 2021).Convenience has been considered key predictor in the acceptance of fintech (Zhang & Kim, 2020).H6: Convenience has a positive effect on adoption of fintech services.

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01048 (2024) MATEC Web of Conferences https://doi.org/10.1051/matecconf/202439201048392 ICMED 2024 al., 2022; Salampasis & Mention, 2018).Goswami et al. ( Table I explains majority of the respondents use fintech services.46.02 respondents belong to age group of 26-25.With respect to education 44.19 percent of users with Under graduate education.64.73 percent of the married people use fintech services 25.19 percent are majority with respect to income group 60,000 and one lack use fintech services.Employees and selfemployed individuals used fintech services mostly.From table

Table 1 .
Demographic details of sample

Table 2 .
Usage of fintech services

Table 3 .
Factor loadings, AVE, CR Fornell and Larcker (1981)ve suggested values byFornell and Larcker (1981).It can be observed from table III that AVE square root values are more than inter-correlations between the constructs ensure discriminant validity

Table 4 .
Inter correlationsMeasurement and structural in a single table