6. Payment systems

Money's technologies have undergone rapid change since the global financial crisis altered people's credit, debt and payment practices, and revenue models from new entrants into the business of moving money began to disrupt the banks and card networks. Anthropologists and other social scientists have only just begun researching the world of payment technology–but they are not alone in being newcomers to the field, the area having been largely the domain of payment industry professionals, not scholarly researchers. This entry provides a historical overview of anthropologists’ and others’ engagement with payment infrastructures, taking note of its relationship to allied work in social studies of money and finance.