**1. Introduction**

China is one of the pioneers in the use of financial technology. WeChat and Alipay are examples of financial technology (fintech) companies from China that are able to shift the dominance of banking. These two payment platforms control the majority of payment transactions and prevent banks from moving freely in the retail business. Citing Forbes, currently, both digital wallets hold 80–90% of payment transactions. There are at least two reasons for the development of mobile payments, especially Alipay and WeChat Pay. The first reason is regarding the infrastructure. In China, the internet infrastructure is developing rapidly at high speed. Second, banking services are considered unfriendly. Therefore, people think that going to the bank is difficult because they have to queue and fulfill various requirements to have an account and get a debit card. In addition, credit cards from banks in China are not popular because Chinese people do not like to have debt. In this case, Alipay and WeChat are gaining fantastic popularity; this is proven by their active users, who reached 520 million and 1 billion monthly, respectively. Furthermore, their consumers invested more than USD 2.9 trillion in 2016 [1].

Consumers rely on online information provided by others, which may be credible to adopt and may profoundly influence their behavior, subjective norms, beliefs, intention, and attitude. Involvement, information credibility, and information quality are important

**Citation:** Foster, B.; Hurriyati, R.; Johansyah, M.D. The Effect of Product Knowledge, Perceived Benefits, and Perceptions of Risk on Indonesian Student Decisions to Use E-Wallets for Warunk Upnormal. *Sustainability* **2022**, *14*, 6475. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su14116475

Academic Editors: José-María Montero, María del Carmen Valls Martínez and Pedro Antonio Martín Cervantes

Received: 7 March 2022 Accepted: 16 May 2022 Published: 25 May 2022

**Publisher's Note:** MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

**Copyright:** © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).

sources that appeal to consumers' social ties [2]. Consumers' psychology and their intention to using online payment platforms are becoming interesting to understand, and increasingly, it has become complicated in the current global market. Therefore, in a broader view of the psychologically driven consumers, motivation and consumer decision-making process features are critical for consumers' online information adoption in making their decisions on using mobile payment services [3].

Another factor that can be a primary determinant of someone wanting to use a technology service is the perception of risk, which is a concern about uncertainty or the possibility of loss when transacting online; one of the electronic payment services is an electronic wallet which has been seen as a facility that provides convenience and convenience in transactions. However, many people see that this technology also has risks, especially because it is related to payments. Although it contains risks according to some, many customers still believe in it and continue to use it [3].

One of the growing e-payment services in Indonesia is Go-Pay. Go-Pay is an e-wallet presented by Go-Jek to make it easier for its customers to complete transactions on the Go-Jek application. The global research institute, Growth for Knowledge (GFK) Indonesia, released data at the end of 2015 related to the use of transportation applications in Indonesia. It is known that the Go-Jek application is the most widely used, with the number of users reaching 21.6% of the total smartphone technology application users in Indonesia [4]. As shown in Figure 1, smartphone users' data in Indonesia in 2016 are estimated to reach 65.2 million users [5]. If you look at this, the number of Go-Jek application users is 21.6% of the 65.2 million users, reaching 14,083,200 users. Among these, many users of the Go-Jek application service and almost every downloader has used the Go-Pay service because of the free balance program for users who enter a referral code/voucher and a discount program. It is also known that Go-Pay transactions' growth has been very high since it was first launched [6].

In addition to the two factors above, a person will also consider the perceived usefulness in using a service technology. Perceived usefulness is the extent to which a person believes that using a technology will help improve their performance. Go-Pay users can get benefits defined as positive impacts received by users while using Go-Pay. The advantage of using Go-Pay services for customers is that Go-Jek service rates are cheaper [4]. This is expected to encourage Go-Jek service users to use Go-Pay, so that users who feel that Go-Pay is helpful for them are expected to increase their use of Go-Pay.

**Figure 1.** Number of electronic money transactions.

Along with the development of technology and the rise of e-commerce, the volume and value of transactions using e-money are experiencing an increasing trend in Figure 1 [7] Since 2017, the increase was significantly even higher, and the importance of e-money usage increased by 2473% from 2013 to 2019. This was accompanied by an increase in transaction volume, which reached 920% over the same period. From the data that describe the use and value of transactions using non-cash payment systems, it can be seen that the use of non-cash payment instruments has been currently and increasingly chosen by the public to make payments for transactions, both goods and services.

Go-Pay is intensively promoting its products with various strategies, some of which are by offering discounts and cashback to encourage people to use the application. These two apps quickly became the consumer's choice, and other players dropped out regularly because they could not compete with this application. Go-Jek is getting serious about strengthening Go-Pay services by acquiring three local financial technology (fintech) startups: Kartuku, Midtrans, and Mapan. The acquisition of these three local startups is because they have processed a total transaction of more than IDR 67.5 trillion per year, either through credit, debit cards, or digital wallets for users, service providers, and affiliated merchants.

According to Figure 2 the Financial Times Confidential Research Mobile Payment [8], the top five electronic money providers in Indonesia are Go-Pay, Ovo, Trash, BCA Klikpay, and Doku wallet. The FT Confidential Research Mobile Payment survey found Go-Pay the most popular mobile payment platform in Indonesia. Still, it faces stiff competition from Ovo, part of the conglomerate Lippo Group. However, this year, the two companies will face even tougher competition as traditional banks have a larger market share. Go-Pay was used by nearly three quarters of mobile payment users in the last three months of July–September, slightly higher than in the same period the previous year, followed by OVO, which is used by about 42%. To date, Go-Pay has partnered with 28 financial institutions and has been accepted by more than 240,000 business partners in various cities in Indonesia, 40% of which are MSMEs [6].

**Figure 2.** Most popular mobile payment services.

Indonesian youth's understanding of financial technology is still general and limited to the meaning of words, as well as understanding young people towards cash. According to Ferdiana, interest in using Go-Pay is not high, and companies engaged in financial technology can develop well, but it takes a lot of time and requires public education and knowledge. It is possible, if later financial technology will master payment transactions, there will be special financial statements to report all cashless based financial transactions [9]. Contrarily, Sembiring et al. found Go-Pay technology is accepted by the community, especially by early adopters of innovation who, in this study, are proxies with students and well accepted. Students are a relatively young age group, so they tend to have a high level of acceptance against the risks of new innovations. In addition, they are also seen as more familiar

with new technologies [10]. Perception of benefits, convenience, trust, familiarity, and risk together equally influenced the intention of using electronic wallets and Go-Pay [9]. The perceived benefits and ease of use have no significant effect on the intention of using ewallets, while the perceived risks and attitudes have a significant influence on the intention of using e-wallets [11]. Zhang and Yu added that electronic buying behaviors were made in terms of consumers' perception of the risk of product effects, consumers' perception of service risks, and consumers' perceptions of other risks. The degree of trust in the e-wallet platform and negative reports about the platform also affect buying behavior [12]. Arifin et al. found in the term of e-wallet five factors of perceived risk that have a significant negative influence on intention to use e-wallets while shopping online, and social risk was found to be insignificant. Among these factors, security risk is the main contributor for consumers to deter from using an e-wallet while purchasing online [13]. The development of e-wallets has led to some challenges to consumers, which comprise security of payment, data protection, the validity and enforceability of the e-contract, insufficient information disclosure, product quality, and enforcement of rights. This issue emerged because many retailers do not understand the main factors that will contribute to consumers' perceived risk. Consumers' perceived risks will influence consumer attitudes toward decision to use e-wallets. Studies on consumers' perceived risks toward intentions to use e-wallets are still inconclusive. Thus, this paper fills the gap in the research area, focusing on students' decisions to use e-wallets.

This study aims to analyze Indonesian students' intentions to use e-wallets in this era of rapid technological advancement, using the technology acceptance model (TAM) as the base. It is also envisaged to analyze if product knowledge, perceived benefits, and perceptions of risk can be considered as an independent factor and variable influencing the decisions to use e-wallets for Indonesian students. With the ever-growing popularity of use of e-payments taking place in applications, risk issues, and high competition, researchers were interested in researching the factors that cause someone to decide to use an e-wallet (Go-Pay) in conducting transactions. A notion stating effective shaping of the student intention to use technology could be achieved at this stage as well. A handful of researchers have studied the TAM model to describe the intention of use of technology amongst students. The results from this study will conceivably help us understand the relationships among the TAM constructs when applied to a bigger sample. The research questions mentioned below are proposed: RQ1. Is the TAM an efficient model to explain Indonesian students' intention to use an e-wallet? RQ2. Which are the significant relationships among the constructs in the TAM in explaining Indonesian students' intention to use an e-wallet?

#### **2. Literature Review**

#### *2.1. Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)*

As a general rule, acceptance is characterized as "an enmity to the term dismissal and means a positive choice to utilize a development". Leaders need to know the issues that influence clients' choices to utilize a specific framework so they can consider it during the improvement stage. This is a typical inquiry of both professionals and analysts as to why individuals acknowledge new innovations. Responding to these inquiries can help them to better techniques for planning, assessing, and anticipating client reactions to new advancements [14]. TAM has proven to be a theoretically helpful model for predicting and explaining user acceptance of information technology. Based on this definition, TAM is used to describe the rejection or acceptance of a technology. TAM shows a number of factors that influence users' decisions about when and how they use a new technology. There are five constructs in TAM that can influence users in using a technology, namely perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude, behavioral intention, and actual system usage [15]. In the TAM model, perceived benefits and perceived convenience are the basic factors determining the acceptance of technology use. In this study, the TAM model is not fully used, but only takes the perception of benefits as a factor influencing the interest in using Go-Pay services for Go-Jek customers. This variable is the basic factor that

is used as a reference for users when they first decide to use a technology. The benefits of using Go-Pay services are a benchmark that customers use as reasons for using Go-Pay service.
