Have you ever thought of your smartphone as your digital wallet? Well, if not, maybe you should. In conjunction with digital financial services, your smartphone becomes a mobile digital bankbook, wallet and identity card rolled into a neat little package.
While this development might be seen as something positive that makes our daily management of money and financial services easy and more accessible, this convenience has a flip side. For those living with an abusive partner, the combination of digital financial services and smart digital devices such as smartphones entails new risks for economic abuse – digitally facilitated economic abuse.
Imagine having your smartphone held hostage or destroyed by your partner, effectively denying you access to money, financial services and financial information. Imagine receiving calls, text messages or emails to your smartphone from your abusive partner in which he threatens you with violence if you do not transfer money to him from your own savings account. Imagine being forced, under threats of violence, to take a quick loan using your electronic ID (eID) that you have installed on your smartphone. Imagine learning that ‘you’ are in debt for hundreds or thousands because your partner had secretly used your eID to take a high-interest loan in your name, without your knowledge or consent. These are only a few of the examples of digitally facilitated economic abuse that we found in interviews with women who had been victims of intimate-personal violence (IPV) who participated in a Swedish research study on economic abuse.
Digitally facilitated economic abuse can be seen as a new, or special form of economic abuse. Abusers target their victims’ smart devices, usually their smartphone, in order to use their digital financial services identifications services (eID or security token device) to economically abuse them.
Economic abuse involves the control of a person’s money and finances by a partner or ex-partner, according to the non-profit organisation Surviving Economic Abuse. Economic abuse is often intertwined with other forms of IPV, but it has come to be seen as a form of IPV that is distinct from other forms. Economic abuse is often underpinned by violence or threats of violence and involves a variety of coercive and controlling behaviour. Economic exploitation is a part of economic abuse and often aims to deprive the victim of economic security and autonomy, leading to a loss of control over finances and long-term financial consequences (e.g. over-indebtedness), making it difficult for them to leave the relationship.
Our interviews with women who had been victims of IPV illustrated with frightening clarity how digital bank, payment and identification services have become a tool for systematic economic abuse. From the perspective of the abuser, the use of smart digital devices and digital financial services have created a smorgasbord of opportunities to monitor, control and exploit their partner regardless of her physical location and time of day. Abusers can rest assured that their threats and demands will always be seen/heard by their victims since the women’s smartphones accompany them wherever they go. We heard countless examples of how abusive men could use digital financial services to monitor and take control over their partners’ money and finances and in the process, deprive them of their financial privacy and autonomy. We heard stories of how abusive men financially exploited their partners by coercing them, almost always under the implicit or explicit threat of violence, and sometimes in a clandestine manner.
The increased digitalisation of the economy as well as of our finances makes life a little bit easier for most of us, allowing us to transfer money, shop, pay bills and carry out a multitude of other financial activities 24/7, without leaving the comfort of our homes. In the digital economy, conducting financial activities has been freed not only from the restrictions of opening hours of financial institutions and shops, but also from restrictions of space. Our smart and very mobile devices allow us to conduct financial transactions from anywhere and everywhere. This convenience and freedom has also opened up new and innovative ways for abusive men to perpetrate economic abuse against their partners (or ex-partners).
Our take-home message is that digital financial services constitute a risk for economic abuse since smart devices such as smartphones are much more than mere communication platforms. Your smartphone is your digital wallet. It is the interface between you and your bank accounts and financial services. Sadly, the risks inherent in the use of digital financial services are almost impossible to protect yourself from. Security measures developed to ensure the secure use of digital financial services are based on the assumption that primary threats to our financial security come from outside the family. Experts’ advice directed at us is to arm ourselves with pincodes and biometric identification (finger or face recognition) and to keep passwords updated and secret. However, these measures provide little protection for those who live with an abusive partner since violence or threats of violence override all existing security advice and measures. Further, the risks associated with the use of digital financial services are almost impossible to avoid since the infrastructure supporting a cash-based economy is rapidly being dismantled. It is naive to think that this development can be stopped, and in fact for most, this development is a good thing. We argue, however, that it is time that policy makers, lending institutions and other actors start to take seriously the great risks involved in the new digital economy and work out ways of protecting the most vulnerable groups in our societies.
Lars Evertsson has a PhD in sociology and is a Professor in Social Work at the Department of Psychology and Social Work at Mid Sweden University. His research focuses on economic abuse and different aspects of intra-household division of money and consumption.
Ann-Sofie Henrikson has a Juris. Dr. and works as a Senior Lecturer at the Law Department at Umeå university, Sweden. Her research focuses on economic abuse and legal solutions to debt problems in general.
Charlott Nyman has PhD in sociology and works as Associate Professor at the Sociology Department at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research focuses on economic abuse, family relations and different aspects of money, finances and consumption in families and couples.
Digitally facilitated economic abuse in the age of digital financial services – new risks for economic abuse in intimate partner violence by Charlott Nyman, Lars Evertsson, and Ann-Sofie Henrikson is available here on Bristol University Press Digital .
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