Institute for Money, Technology & Financial Inclusion

Payments are political in that they are a function of state sovereignty, and also an extension of it. This is old news, of course: money itself emanates from state sovereignty. But digital payments, obviating the anonymity of cash transactions and generating vast quantities of data in their wake, provide new opportunities for states to extend their reach. These politics of payments are not, of course, limited to authoritarian regimes. Payment providers have been enlisted into government service almost since their inception, whether in the tracking of cash to hamper criminal activities or in the regulations around customer due diligence and identification for cross‐boundary payments of all kinds. With more attention to payments, and payment data, people can also hear the rumblings of another politics. Data activism has emerged as a potential social movement and political force.