Technology and Democracy Series: Perspectives from Political Economy View Other Sessions

Financial technologies—an array of digital technologies ranging from mobile banking and digital payment systems to algorithms that calculate credit scores—are often hailed as solutions to poverty, inequality, and discrimination. Tech company executives, policymakers, nonprofit organization directors, and academic researchers alike have all expounded on the promises of financial technologies. However, abolitionist theorizing on carceral logics and Indigenous theorizing on invasive infrastructures can reveal the failures and deceptions of these faulty promises. Dr. Terri Friedline discusses the failures and deceptions of financial technologies with examples from research on mobile banking and credit scoring.