Consumer payments in the Netherlands

Qualitative research

Dutch consumers overwhelmingly pay for purchases with a bank debit card rather than cash. How ready are they for other transaction services, such as mobile wallets, money transfer apps, or alternative financial service providers?

Our task was to identify what kinds of transaction services Dutch consumers use while in public, and why they choose some services over others.

We interviewed people living in the Netherlands about how they make payments while away from home. We used two main methods: the portable kit method (in which interviewees are asked about the things they carry with them on a daily basis) and home tours (asking participants to show us how they manage financial data around the home).

Our findings indicate that Dutch consumers depend heavily on Dutch financial products and services, and use a narrow range of products and service providers. However, they are slowly beginning to explore new ways of transacting, such as via specialised apps or mobile banking features. Our interviewees were concerned about security and fraud, but view change in payments as inevitable. They expect that they will have to change their practices in the future.

Erin and Gawain presented this research at the Bundesbank’s International Cash Conference in Munich in 2019.

Online behaviour in technology communities

Strategy consulting

The Symfony project needs to be able to track Code of Conduct (CoC) violations and share them on a need-to-know basis to prevent violators from attending or speaking at events.

However, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented on 25 May 2018, requires companies to seek explicit consent for all data collection, storage and use. It also grants users the right to request the deletion of their data.

The problem Symfony presented to us was: how can you get permission from people to be blacklisted? How can the company maintain a list of people who are forbidden to attend events, while complying with GDPR?

We conducted online observations and investigated other organisations’ strategies for preparing for GDPR. On the basis of this, we provided the Symfony project with a report that; a) explained the relevant aspects of GDPR with respect to user behaviour, b) laid out guidelines for seeking user consent, and c) advised on internal and third party data handling.

You can watch Gawain’s and Erin’s talk on this research at SymfonyLive London 2018.

Financial inclusion in Africa

Knowledge synthesis

Working with FinTechStage, we carried out stakeholder mapping and data analysis of financial inclusion in the East African Community. We also assisted FinTechStage with their meetings with high-level stakeholders in Cape Town and London. Outputs were meeting reports, interim reports on financial inclusion issues, and a final report on our stakeholder mapping exercise.

Stakeholder mapping involved identifying every single bank, fintech organisation, NGO or government organisation that offered financial services or ran some kind of financial inclusion program. We also looked at key development indicators so we could compare the financial inclusion of people with the services being offered to them.

There were substantial differences across the region, with Kenya consistently showing the best results, and Sudan being behind everyone else. One interesting insight that emerged was that financial inclusion programs work best in countries that are somewhat a bit more developed. Financial inclusion is sometimes touted as being for the ‘poorest of the poor’, but it is difficult to reach this group when infrastructure is underdeveloped and there is political instability.

Collaboration in open source software communities

Knowledge capture

Maintainers of open source software (OSS) projects face significant issues managing their communities due to a variety of social, psychological and practical issues. Many guides exist to help both contributors and leaders do OSS better, but they tend not to address the messier human issues that put projects and their contributors at risk. These include mental health, neurological differences, diversity, complex social interactions, and culture.

We conducted interviews with a number of maintainers of OSS projects around the globe, focusing on issues that make maintainers’ lives difficult and put their projects at risk.

Then, in collaboration with Maintainerati and GitHub, our team organised an event in Berlin to bring maintainers together in an Open Space session. This was not just a meeting record, but also a research opportunity. We recorded and analysed attendees’ discussions on the problems facing software maintainers, and we turned this into the Maintainerati Berlin Event Report and Session Notes (2020).

We are now preparing a final report based on our qualitative interviews and observations from the Berlin event.

Download the Maintainerati Berlin Event Report and Session Notes.

CFRM Toolkit

A guide to using mixed methods to research financial behaviour

Consumers are increasingly using multiple financial products, providers, and channels. This dynamic behaviour makes their choices difficult to track and understand. How can we adapt our research approaches and methods to changing consumer behaviours in a changing market? Working with the Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion (IMTFI) at the University of California, Irvine, we set out to demonstrate how financial institutions and finance researchers are using innovative research methods to understand contemporary consumers. As well as a large online search, we interviewed professionals working in banks, technology companies, marketing agencies, startups, and more. We asked them how their research needs are changing, and how they are developing new approaches to solve business problems. The result is the Consumer Finance Research Methods Toolkit (CFRM Toolkit). It includes six descriptions of innovative methods and twelve case studies of how they are applied to finance research. It also includes discussion of current challenges in consumer finance research, and points to useful resources such as links to further reading, relevant institutions, and data sources.

Best Practices in Pensions

Case studies of cutting-edge ways to encourage people to engage with their pensions

Pension schemes around the world are facing increasing pressure due to ageing populations. In order to cope, many countries are switching from traditional state- and industry-based schemes to ones that place more responsibility upon the individual to prepare for retirement.

It is important that customers engage more actively with their retirement planning in order to retain a good standard of living upon retirement and reduce the burden on society at large. However, achieving active engagement is difficult. There are many reasons for this. For younger people, retirement might seem too far in the future to worry about. Many people feel that they do not know enough about pensions or finances to take control of their own affairs.

To tackle the problem of customer engagement, pension providers and administrators around the world are innovating with new ways of presenting information to consumers. They are using multiple channels, media formats, and communication styles to reach different segments of consumers. While there is still a long way to go, these early experiments are promising, thanks to the application of innovative, human-centred design and behavioural science.

In our paper, Customer Engagement with Pensions: Global Best Practices, we outline some successful innovations from around the world. In many cases, pension providers don’t need to do their own research and re-invent the engagement world; we can apply lessons that have been tried and tested elsewhere.

Female Finance Research

An analysis of how financial services providers are meeting the needs of women customers

Historically, few financial tools have been developed with women in mind or marketed to them directly. Today, however, new financial services are appearing on the market that respond to practical everyday through better design and marketing. But there is little visibility over what advances are being made in this field.

Collaborating with the EWPN, Keen Innovation and fintech analyst Dr. Anette Broløs, we set out to discover what this market consists of, how extensive it is, what kinds of women it serves (as well as where they’re located), and–most importantly–how fintech products claim to serve women.

The resulting report, Female Finance: Digital, Mobile, Networked, maps out the market for financial services for women in five areas: payments and credit, financial management, insurance, investment, and capital for entrepreneurs. It also analyses the ways in which financial services providers are approaching the female market

Maintainerati Berlin Event Report

A summary and analysis of discussions at an Open Space event for software maintainers

Maintainerati Berlin 2019 brought together nearly 80 maintainers of open source software (OSS) projects from all over the world to share their experiences of running and maintaining digital infrastructure projects.

The Event Report presents an analysis of 12 “Key Challenges and Lessons” that occurred repeatedly across the different sessions. For each one we describe what it is, what participants think causes it, and their ideas for how to solve it. In the conclusion, Creating Culture Change, we make some initial suggestions for what can be done to create healthier OSS communities.

The Session Notes are a record of all 29 discussion sessions that took place on the day. We have made these session summaries freely available in the hope that maintainers, researchers and policy-makers can use them to better understand the problems faced by communities developing digital infrastructure. We have provided our own analysis in the Event Report, but we encourage the open source community to dig deeper on their own.

Dr. Erin Taylor

Principal

Erin is an economic anthropologist with 17 years of fieldwork experience around the world. She is fascinated by financial behaviour in all its guises, from how people use technology in ways its designers didn’t intend, to their emotional experiences of their financial lives.

One of Erin’s recent honours was to be invited to present a dilemma to the audience at SIBOS 2020, raising the question of whether it is ethical to offer women their own financial services. Erin is author of the book “Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform Their Lives (2013, AltaMira).

Gawain Lynch

Strategy & Project Lead

A reformed technologist, Gawain bridges the gap between computers and people. Gawain has been working in a research capacity since July 2011 when he began working as a technical advisor to university-based researchers.

At Canela, Gawain assists companies with research design, internal change processes and cross-industry collaborations.

Dr. Alexia Maddox

Digital Sociologist

Alexia is a digital sociologist whose research covers issues from the online reptile trade to Bitcoin. She collaborates on post-occupancy space evaluations, innovation salons for interdisciplinary teams, social mapping of digital audiences and ethnographic engagement with digital communities.

She is the author of the book “Research Methods and Global Online Communities: A Case Study” (2015, Routledge).

Dr. Melanie Uy

UX Lead

Melanie is a user researcher and service designer who is known for asking unexpected questions. From 2009 until 2011 she ran a research and design consultancy, Artefact, consulting with clients such as FERN-C, an MLM health distribution company. In 2012 Melanie relocated to the Netherlands, where she continued to work on research and user experience projects, including profiling the home conditions of elderly patients and their caretakers for Care@Home of TUDelft.

Her present side projects include studying blockchain and working on technological interventions for vulnerable digital activists with The Hague Projects.

Dr. Whitney Easton

Ethnographer

An expert in food culture and medical behaviour, Whitney is a practicing anthropologist and professor with interests in the anthropology of food and agriculture, economic anthropology, solidarity and alternative economies, migration, and sustainability. She has conducted ethnographic field research on agricultural change, farming livelihoods, and tourism in Italy, as well as with cultural analysis for a range of corporate clients.

In her academic and applied work, Whitney is drawn to applying anthropological insights to global issues of sustainability and social justice.

Sneha Karukala

Marketing

Sneha is passionate about marketing. Currently she is pursuing her Master's in Management at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She has work experience in the commercial sector in India. Sneha is always motivated to learn new things and face new challenges at work.

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Work with us

Do you feel you can fill a gap in our team? Get in touch!

EthnoBorrel

Professional networking for ethnographers

Erin and Gawain founded EthnoBorrel to foster the relationship between ethnographers and industry.

The aim of EthnoBorrel is to strengthen participants’ professional skills and advance the value of ethnography in the Netherlands and Europe. Attendees can present their work, seek advice from peers, discover opportunities, advance their skills, and link up with broader global networks.

You can find out more on our website or in our Meetup group.

EWPN Research

Community for women in cards, fintech & payments in Europe

Erin is co-lead of the European Women in Payments Network (EWPN) research group, along with Dr. Anette Broløs.

The EWPN Research Network brings together payments researchers working in industry, academia, and not-for-profit organisations. We work together to connect, create, and collaborate on research projects and activities. Our goal is to improve the quality of payments research and advance our knowledge of the role of payments in society and industry.

Join EWPN Research on LinkedIn

Maintainerati

Professional networking and communication

Gawain is co-founder and Chair of the Maintainerati Foundation, which helps software maintainers build healthy communities. Maintainerati is a global, community-led movement to empower FLOSS maintainers to work together to identify and overcome the challenges they face. Our goal is to help each other to develop healthy, productive, and sustainable projects and communities.

We recognise that a wealth of knowledge about running OSS projects is in the hands of seasoned maintainers. But while many maintainers generously offer their wisdom and lessons learned to others, these conversations often remain limited to local contexts. We provide a space where these lessons can be shared and built upon at a global level. Our activities include several community-led initiatives, including Maintainerati events, the Knowledge Production initiative, working groups, and our Bikeshed app.

Visit the Maintainerati website.

Anthropology + Technology Conference

The rapid pace of emerging technologies means we are already seeing a significant social impact. The Anthropology + Technology Conference brings together social scientists and AI technologists to foster dialogue and collaboration across the disciplines.

Erin is a part of the team helping to shape this conference, especially the fintech content. We recommend you check out the conference’s podcast.

Listen to the A+T podcast