Project Summary

Perpetrators of economic abuse are misusing the financial products, services and technologies provided by banks in order to cause harm to their intimate partners. Examples include fraudulently open credit cards in their victim’s name, withdrawing cash from joint accounts without their consent, using real-time transaction notifications to stalk them, and sending unwanted or abusive messages via online payment descriptions. Financial service providers are starting to take notice and are implementing initiatives to tackle economic abuse. However, these initiatives, although welcome, are mostly reactive, focusing on minimising harm after abuse has already occurred. In this project, we take a proactive stand against economic abuse by identifying and proposing ways of radically reconfiguring the banking features that abusers use to their advantage, and by envisioning new functionality that can prevent abusive behaviour. In close collaboration with banking professionals and under the design leadership of victim-survivors, we will use participatory design methods to revisit how banking services and technologies are designed, and will produce a key set of recommendations for designing out economic abuse from banking products. 

Project team