Coping with Digital Risk in Urban Bangladesh: Fintech Adoption Across Different Levels of Usage Experience

Fintech adoption increasingly takes place in digital environments where users must balance the convenience of financial technologies against persistent risks of fraud, scams, account misuse, and unauthorized access. This study examines the associations of cybersecurity literacy, perceived fintech security, and institutional trust with fintech adoption among urban users in Bangladesh, with particular attention to secure user behaviour and differences across levels of fintech usage experience. Data from 357 respondents were analysed using Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), including indirect effects and multi-group analysis. Cybersecurity literacy, perceived fintech security, and secure user behaviour have significant positive associations with adoption, although their individual effect sizes are small. Institutional trust has no significant direct association with adoption. The indirect association through secure user behaviour is significant for cybersecurity literacy but not for perceived fintech security or institutional trust. Measurement invariance checks support standardized path comparisons across the three tenure groups, but none of the nine focal comparisons is significant using two-sided bootstrap MGA at the 5% level. A four-band sensitivity analysis does not establish robust differences after adjustment for multiple comparisons. The model accounts for 61.0% of the in-sample variance in adoption; out-of-sample predictive performance was not assessed. The findings therefore support a cautious, association-based account of security-related fintech use among existing users, without establishing causal effects or developmental changes with experience.