Greiffenhagen2023

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Greiffenhagen2023
BibType ARTICLE
Key Greiffenhagen2023
Author(s) Christian Greiffenhagen, Rongyu Li, Nick Llewellyn
Title The Visibility of Digital Money: A Video Study of Mobile Payments Using WeChat Pay
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, Paying, Money, Video Analysis, Vision, Seeing, Digital technology
Publisher
Year 2023
Language English
City
Month
Journal Sociology
Volume 57
Number 3
Pages 493–515
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/00380385221104007
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This article analyses situated uses of digital payment platforms, contributing to the sociology of money, and digital sociology. Our data are video recordings of 256 small-scale transactions, gathered from across four Chinese cities, at grocery stores, supermarkets, street markets, restaurants, and cafes. Our focus is the visibility of money in particular circumstances associated with some WeChat payments. In these cases, payment is made visible via a confirmation screen only seen by the customer. We argue that payment applications provide a good empirical site for understanding how digital media reconfigure ‘the social’ by shaping how monetary information is seen and heard. Rather than eliminating trust, reducing transactions to impersonal semi-automated affairs, we show how mobile payments generate new and complex patterns of economic action. A nuanced language game is described that requires sellers to trust customers are acting in good faith. We show how ‘the social’ is imprinted on this contemporary monetary medium.

Notes