Money talks
Money talks
- December 14, 2015
- Has money really changed from shells to digital apps? Underneath, money is always a token of our social relations
From ApplePay to Bitcoin or Kenya’s famous M-Pesa mobile money system, digital payment
systems are proliferating at a pace never before seen. People are predicting the end
of cash and coin. And many promoters and start-ups in payments pitch their service
as the next stage – even the final pinnacle! – in the evolution of money. Advertisements
for mobile phone-based payment systems sometimes exploit this. PayPal’s iPhone application,
which can allow users to send small amounts of money to each other just by tapping
their phones together, was released with an advertising campaign that explicitly drew
upon this evolutionary story. The ad included mock cave drawings, hieroglyphics and
even a narrator speaking in tones familiar to many people as those of a natural history
documentary. The narrator identified the two characters in the ad as ‘specimens’,
again invoking the familiar terms of popular natural history. Similarly, the mobile
phone provider Zain advertised its mobile money service, Zain Zap, with images of
‘ancient’ systems of barter and money, before bringing the story up to the present
or near-future with the advent of its mobile service.
The evolutionary narrative is important not just because it has a starring role in
advertisements. It is also important because it structures people’s understandings
of what money was, is, and thus what money – and mobile money – can become. And if
we think money really did go through this evolutionary process, from barter to shells,
coins, paper, plastic and electrons, we risk making several related assumptions...
Read more from social sciences dean Bill Maurer’s essay on money, as featured by Aeon.
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