New report: Money and Payments in Low Income Brazil
Emerging digital technologies are transforming currencies and finance, changing the way we save, spend and exchange value. Around the world, governments are experimenting with Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) as a way of providing a new type of money to their citizens and to tackle macroeconomic issues at the same time.
But do people really need a new form of money? If so, why? If not, how might people incorporate new digital ways of paying into their existing financial practices?
Finthropology carried out qualitative research in Brazil to answer these questions. We worked with our funders, SICPA, a global leader in security solutions, to uncover insights into people’s financial practices and help them explore the possible future use cases of a CBDC. Our team carried out interviews, observations and questionnaires with 63 low-income Brazilians in São Paulo and Vale do Piraí.
The resulting report, Money and Payments in Low Income Brazil, focuses on insights in five key areas: how people pay, managing money, financial experience, trust, and infrastructure, trust and identification. Our analysis is grounded in the stories of the people themselves: the report provides real-life examples of how people negotiate issues with payments, questions of trust, collective money management, interactions between buyers and sellers, and much more.
In the report’s conclusion, we return to our research question, providing guidance for how a new financial tool such as a CBDC might provide real value to users.
We would like to thank SICPA for their vision in recognising how grounded, contextualised research can assist design decisions regarding new forms of money. We would also like to thank our research team: Erin Taylor, Anette Broløs, Cristina Wulfhorst and Giovanna Paccillo.
The report can be downloaded free of charge.
About SICPA
Market leader in security inks and leading provider of secured authentication, identification, traceability and supply chain solutions, SICPA is a long-trusted partner to governments, central banks, high security printers and the currency industry. Every day, governments, companies and millions of citizens rely on its expertise, which combines material-based covert features and digital technologies, to protect the integrity and value of currency, personal identity, value documents, e-government services, as well as products and brands.
About Finthropology
Finthropology helps organizations to understand their customers’ financial behaviour and innovate to meet their needs. We connect you with your customers and train your teams to be truly client-centric, helping your organisation to get ahead of your competitors in a fast-changing market. We apply our cutting-edge knowledge of human behaviour to help you create successful financial services for a human world.
