Exploring user acceptance of a fintech chatbot powered by LLMs among older adults

Many banks have shut their physical offices and shifted to online banking. Many will benefit from this transition, but older adults may be left behind due to their traditional views on money and technology. Without proper consideration of their needs and preferences, older adults may become marginalized in this digitalization process. In this paper, we investigate why older adults may or may not be comfortable with the technology-enabled ways of banking and their acceptance of a fintech chatbot. Towards this, we built a chatbot specifically designed to help older adults complete financial transactions such as money transfers, checking balances and managing their pensions. We developed this chatbot using human-centred design principles and inclusive and accessibility design methods. We incorporated Large Language Models (LLMs) into our prototype to enable users to engage in casual conversations with the chatbot to mimic chats with human bank advisors in physical venues. To assess the effectiveness of the prototype, we carried out user studies involving older adults. We analysed the study’s results to identify the factors that contribute to the trust and acceptance of the chatbot and in online banking ingeneral. We further extrapolate these findings to provide recommendations for designing fintech chatbots for olde radults.