FinTech: making finance fun

Lai, Karen

Abstract

By mobilizing new socio-technical knowledges and engagement that highlight the ‘fun’, ‘entertaining’ and ‘aspirational’ dimensions of finance, FinTech is changing financial knowledge and practices of everyday consumers in distinctive ways. This chapter highlights three research themes regarding why making finance fun matters. First, the merging of social media as entertainment and as sources of financial advice is leading to the rise of an influencer economy, and these ‘finfluencers’ are shaping everyday financial practice that could generate new and unequal risk outcomes. Second, the use of gamification techniques to capture user attention and data is configuring user behavior to reward certain financial practices, and shaping the business strategies of banks and fintech firms to enhance their intermediary positions. Third, the combined impacts of finfluencers and gamification in everyday financial practice could change how the children and youth markets are being engaged and mobilized in changing financial subjectivities.

Citation

Lai, K. (2025). FinTech: making finance fun. In Y. Aoyama, D. Haberly, R. Horner, & S. Schindler (Eds.), A Research Agenda for Economic Geography (175-188). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035339921.00019

• Publication Date: May 8, 2025
• Deposit Date: May 21, 2025
• Publicly Available Date: May 9, 2026
• Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
• Pages: 175-188
• Series Title: Geography, Planning and Tourism 2025
• Book Title: A Research Agenda for Economic Geography
• ISBN: 9781035339914
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4337/9781035339921.00019
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/3956855