Fascinating insights from recent anthropological research reveal that the simple act of paying is far more complex than we imagine. No longer just a means to settle a debt, ‘how to pay’ has evolved into its own *commodified product*, often becoming more valuable to businesses than the goods purchased themselves. The multitude of payment options available today, from contactless cards to mobile wallets and QR codes, are subtly marketed as distinct experiences, promising faster service, less hassle, and future rewards, leveraging sensory elements like the crisp sound of a card tap or the haptic buzz from a smartwatch.
This transformation signifies an ‘affective turn’ in payment commodification, where the sensorial, emotional, and relational elements of paying are transformed into marketable commodities. Emotions like trust, anxiety, and satisfaction are not merely personal experiences but are deliberately harnessed and leveraged as exchangeable assets within broader capitalist frameworks, becoming integral to profit production and extraction. In essence, companies are now designing and marketing the act of paying itself, not just what we buy, with consumers choosing methods that reflect their preferences for convenience, security, identity expression, and personal values.
New forms of capitalism are emerging in this digital payment arena. For instance, Kenya’s M-Pesa has become a deeply embedded cultural norm, even verbifying the act of mobile payment. Its profitability extends beyond transaction fees, as the platform leverages user data to cultivate affective states like trust and loyalty, thus becoming an engine of profit, exposing underlying power asymmetries and neo-colonial structures. Conversely, in Jamaica, the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) Jam-Dex faces significant resistance, with some interpretations linking it to the ‘Mark of the Beast,’ revealing deep-seated religious anxieties and historical mistrust towards financial systems and state authority.
These diverse examples underscore that payments are not just technological innovations but dynamic cultural performances imbued with social and cultural meaning, reflecting complex networks of trust, obligation, and social relationships. They help construct and negotiate social identities, as seen in the cryptocurrency space where choosing certain tokens reinforces community belonging. Furthermore, payment infrastructures carry political and geopolitical implications, embodying desires for national modernization and shaping national identity, as exemplified by how Safaricom integrates corporate branding with Kenyan iconography.
This calls for a deeper anthropological engagement with payments, understanding them as moments where individuals negotiate social positions, express desires, form or sever relationships, and engage with broader regimes of value. The article by Camilla Carabini and Dr. Joy Malala, “Payments as performances: The affective turn in the commodification of value,” urges us to explore how our everyday acts of paying are profoundly intertwined with global economic processes and shape our lived experiences.
Read the article here – https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1467-8322.70008