The Financialisation of Identity

Orsi Husz ()
Additional contact information
Orsi Husz: Uppsala University

Chapter Chapter 6 in Bankminded, 2025, pp 165-195 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract This chapter traces the analogue prehistory of Sweden’s digital BankIDs. It shows how the introduction of cheque accounts for wages required a new approach to identity verification, forcing the banks to issue ID documents and thus take on a role that typically belongs to government authorities. The conceptual and practical similarities between credit cards and ID cards and the justifications for the new ID verification routines reinforced the new link between money and identity. The analytical focus on bankification highlights an overlooked phase in the history of identification documents. The chapter argues that, between a paper-based documentary identification regime dominated by the bureaucratic state and a digital regime that is typically assumed to be commercially driven, there was an intermediate plastic regime in which identity became financialised. The development of computerisation, the banks’ role in identity management and their work towards a new financial information and transaction system helped to build the new intimate relationship between banks and their customers into the everyday financial infrastructure. As early as the 1970s, historical actors realised that this mass-managed intimacy held the promise of commercialising identities through the use of transactional data.

Keywords: ID cards; Credit cards; History of ID documents; Financial identification; Credit reporting; Online payments; Cashless society; Commercial surveillance; Surveillance capitalism; Transactional identities; BankID; Banks; Sweden in the 1950s and 1960s (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palscp:978-3-031-77653-3_6

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9783031776533

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-77653-3_6

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Studies in Economic History from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().