The Interplay of Financial Exchanges and Offline Interpersonal Relationships through Digital Peer-to-Peer (P2P) Payments
Research Questions:
How does using digital P2P payment apps affect people's experiences of interpersonal financial exchanges?
How does using digital P2P payment apps affect people's offline interpersonal relationships?
cr: Unsplash
cr: Unsplash
Financial transactions play a critical role in people's interpersonal relationships since money is a sensitive and complex component of everyday life. In particular, emerging digital peer-to-peer (P2P) payment applications further complicate how people deal with each other regarding money. Yet, there is a lack of empirical evidence on how and why such technology may lead to new and more complex influences on people's offline interpersonal relationships.
Some popular nonbank provider P2P payment apps: Venmo, CashApp, Apple Pay, Messenger Pay, WeChat Pay, PayPal, Google Pay, Samsung Pay
Some P2P apps supported by financial institutions: Zelle, Bancolombia App, Chase QuickPay, Monzo App
Using 23 in-depth interviews, the study explores the influences of using digital P2P payments on people's experiences of interpersonal financial exchanges and their offline interpersonal relationships. Our findings show that using digital P2P payments helps reduce awkwardness and ensures a stronger sense of fairness in financial exchanges. In addition, though digital P2P payments can relieve tension and reduce distrust in users' interpersonal relationships, they also result in loss of emotion and increase peer pressure.
We extend existing studies on computer-mediated interpersonal relationships by highlighting the important role of the complicated technology-mediated financial exchanges in perceiving, shaping, and approaching today's offline interpersonal relationships. We also propose potential design implications for designers and developers to take such an interplay of financial exchanges and interpersonal relationships into consideration to design more supportive and socially satisfactory digital P2P payment platforms in the future.