New Money: How Payment Became Social Media

A new vision of money as a communication technology that creates and sustains invisible—often exclusive—communities

One of the basic structures of everyday life, money is at its core a communication media. Payment systems—cash, card, app, or Bitcoin—are informational and symbolic tools that integrate us into, or exclude us from, the society that surrounds us. Examining the social politics of financial technologies, Lana Swartz reveals what's at stake when we pay.

This accessible and insig...