Evaluation of Digital Wallet Adoption and Consumer Payment Preferences in Emerging Fintech Markets

Digital wallets are payment systems that are software based and help individuals store their credentials in a secure manner. They enable payments, fund transfers, and money collection by the use of smartphones. This has been enabled due to increasing mobile connectivity, financial inclusion, and regulatory reforms in FinTech markets. Design/methodology/approach: This research examines the key determinants of digital wallet adoption and investigates consumer payment choices among digital wallets, cards, bank transfers, and cash in Vietnam. A quantitative cross-sectional approach was employed, involving 520 active mobile payment users selected through stratified sampling. Primary information was obtained using a structured questionnaire, while supplementary transaction-related data were gathered from relevant central bank reports to support the empirical investigation and contextual understanding of digital payment behaviour. Procedurally, wallet adoption was assessed by measuring awareness, Perceived Value (PV), Trust (TR), Convenience (CON), Social Influence (SI), and Perceived Cost (PC) were examined as drivers of Digital Wallet Adoption (DWA), then tracing how adoption shaped usage frequency and method selection through Consumer Payment Preference (CPP). Findings: The collected survey data underwent demographic profiling, descriptive statistics, reliability and validity testing, and Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) in Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 28 (v28), whereas Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was subsequently carried out in SmartPLS version 4 (v4). Originality/value: Measurement reliability was strong Cronbach’s Alpha (CA) up to 0.891. PV (β = 0.284) and CON (β = 0.267) most strongly influenced DWA, which in turn significantly influenced CPP (β = 0.312) in an emerging FinTech market. Wallets dominated small, frequent payments, whereas cash persisted rurally. Trust-building and interoperability remain essential.