An Exploration of Trust as an Antecedent of Unified Payment Interface Usage: A SEM-Neural Network Approach

Introduction of UPI has revolutionized the Indian banking system and since then dynamics of payment ecosystem has noted a major transformation. UPI has proved to be a boon in the pandemic situation by facilitating contactless and remote transactions. Thus it is crucial to study user acceptance of payments using UPI and factors influencing its usage. The present paper extended UTAUT3 (Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology) with an additional construct called 'trust'. Studies on behavioral intention are not rare. But behavioral intention towards UPI usage is not yet explored. What makes this study unique is its attempt to use both SEM and Neural Network to analyze data. It will guide future researchers to pursue technology adoption studies using this multi-method technique. The novelty also resides in the fact that trust, the newly added construct, has proved to be the most important antecedent of behavioral intention towards UPI usage.