Financial technology and the micro small and medium Enterprises: Implications for sustainable development in Nigeria

Despite growing FinTech adoption across Sub-Saharan Africa, evidence on how adoption determinants translate into digital financial inclusion and sustainable development outcomes for Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in structurally constrained economies such as Nigeria remains limited; this study addresses that gap. We extend the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) with perceived trust, a theoretically apt addition given that cybersecurity risk, regulatory uncertainty, and platform credibility are salient concerns for Nigerian MSMEs. Using data from 181 MSMEs in Lagos State, analysed via covariance-based structural equation modelling (CB-SEM), the results show that facilitating conditions (β = 0.357, p < 0.05) exert a medium-sized effect on adoption intention, and perceived trust (β = 0.198, p < 0.05) a smaller but non-negligible effect, whereas performance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence are not significant, consistent with evidence that cognitive and social predictors of technology acceptance lose explanatory power once infrastructural and institutional constraints dominate. Together with these effect sizes, this implies that structural and institutional factors, rather than cognitive perceptions, are the primary levers of FinTech adoption in resource-limited environments. Widespread digital banking use alongside minimal digital lending uptake indicates that digital financial inclusion here remains thin, limiting MSMEs' access to the credit and growth-enabling services needed to advance Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) 8 and 9. By extending UTAUT with trust and revealing an inversion of its conventional construct hierarchy in a developing-economy context, this study contributes new theoretical and empirical evidence on the adoption-to-inclusion pathway. The policy implications include investing in infrastructure, building platform trust through consumer protection and cybersecurity, and extending FinTech beyond payment-based services to reach deeper financial inclusion.