Influence of Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities on the Adoption of Fintech Applications among Millennials in Sri Lanka.

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.