Abstract:
Rapid advancements in technology have enabled the financial industry to use
information technology to provide efficient and effective services to their customers.
While the blessing of technology provides value-added service to customers there
are also risks that come with it in the form of various cyber vulnerabilities. This
research investigates the influence of cybersecurity vulnerabilities on the adoption
of fintech applications among millennials in Sri Lanka. The focus of this study on
cyber vulnerabilities was data breaches, malware attacks, unsecured
communications, privacy concerns, weak authentication, and reputational damages.
There was substantial literature available in cybersecurity and fintech adoption
outside of Sri Lanka. However, there was a gap in the literature in the context of Sri
Lanka. This study adopted Saunders et al.'s Research Onion framework, employing
a positivist philosophy and a deductive approach to test hypotheses on
cybersecurity vulnerabilities which were the independent variables and FinTech
adoption among Sri Lankan millennials, being the dependent variable. Data was
collected via a mono-method, cross-sectional survey and administered
electronically to over 384 participants through a judgmental sampling and used
both descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation) to summarize the data and
inferential statistics (Pearson Correlation, Chi-Square Test) to test the hypotheses
and draw conclusions about the relationships between variables. The analysis has
been undertaken by statistical software, SPSS to validate the findings. Further, this
study confirms that cybersecurity vulnerabilities significantly deter FinTech
adoption among Sri Lankan millennials. Empirical findings consistently show a
positive correlation, with respondents agreeing that these vulnerabilities influence
their adoption decisions, aligning with existing literature. Moreover, research
highlights the critical need for robust cybersecurity measures in FinTech
applications to build user trust and foster adoption in the Sri Lankan context,
especially given the country's unique challenges in financial inclusion and ICT
infrastructure.
