"Pick Someone Who Can Kick Your Ass" - Moneywork in Financial Third Party Access

Belén Barros Pena, Bailey Kursar, Rachel E. Clarke, Katie Alpin, Merlyn Holkar, John Vines

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    13 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    This paper explores some of the new possibilities for financial third party access that are enabled by "open banking". The term open banking is used to designate the availability of banks' customer data through application programming interfaces (APIs). Financial third party access refers to the mechanisms that facilitate the engagement of others in the management of our personal finances. Engaging trusted others in personal finances may be especially valuable for individuals experiencing financial hardship or life circumstances that place their financial stability at risk. We deployed a new third party access tool enabled by the UK Open Banking APIs for 90 days with 14 people who self-identified as living with a mental health condition. The tool, which was developed by a financial technology startup founded by the second author, allowed participants to select a trusted "ally" who was notified when certain transactions took place in participants' bank accounts. During the deployment, the 14 participants and 8 of their "allies" took part in a diary study and pre- and post-deployment interviews. The experiences of our participants reveal the inadequacy and shortcomings of existing formal third party access mechanisms, and the moneywork involved in financial third party access. We argue that focusing on this moneywork can help us design flexible, proportionate and practice-sensitive services for financial third party access that move beyond discourses of protection and control in order to enable meaningful financial collaboration.
    Original languageEnglish
    Article number218
    Number of pages28
    JournalProceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction
    Volume4
    Issue numberCSCW3
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020

    Keywords

    • Digital Financial Services
    • Financial Third Party Access
    • Financial Collaboration
    • Open Banking
    • Diary Study
    • Interaction Design
    • User Experience Design

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