Rahmiati Rahmiati, Dina Patrisia, Perengki Susanto, Nurul Ain Mustakim, Gesit Thabrani, Vidyarini Dwita
The growth of digital technology has significantly reshaped payment systems in the retail sector, encouraging the shift from cash-based transactions to electronic payment (e-payment) solutions. This study investigates factors that influence how retail SMEs in West Sumatra use e-payment systems, using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and including innovativeness as a moderating factor. A quantitative approach was employed by distributing structured questionnaires to 195 retail SME owners and managers, and Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to examine the data. The results show that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use have a significant positive influence on attitude toward using e-payment. Furthermore, perceived ease of use significantly affects perceived usefulness, and attitude has a strong positive impact on behavioral intention to adopt e-payment. However, the study finds that the association between attitude and behavioral intention is not moderated by innovativeness, indicating that individual differences in innovativeness do not strengthen or weaken this relationship in the context of retail SMEs. This study offers novelty by extending the TAM to the context of retail SMEs in an emerging country and testing innovativeness as a moderating variable. Unlike prior studies, which generally confirm the positive role of innovativeness. Results indicate that innovativeness has no moderating effect on the relationship between attitude and behavioral intention. This unexpected result enriches the TAM literature by highlighting that the adoption of e-payment among small businesses is shaped more by contextual and organizational factors than by individual innovativeness. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2026.
Department of Management, Universitas Negeri Padang, Padang, Indonesia; Universiti Teknologi Mara, Shah Alam, Malaysia
