Follow the Money: Managing Personal Finance Digitally

Abstract

The move towards digital payments and mobile money, and away from physical cash and banking services offers users opportunities to change the ways that they can spend, save and manage their money through a variety of personal financial management services. However, set against ordinary, everyday patterns of spending, saving and other forms of financial transaction, it is not clear how users might interact with, understand, or value financial management services that utilise rich data and connected digital content for their personal use. In order to explore how people might engage with such systems, we conducted a study of financial activity, following people’s transactional activity over time, and interviewing them about their practices, understandings, needs, concerns and expectations of current and future financial technologies. Drawing from the everyday activities and practices observed, we identify implications for the design of digitally enabled, personal financial systems.