This work addresses the challenges associated with cashless transactions and Mobile Financial Services (MFS) in the Global South. In our 19-months long interview study in Dhaka, Bangladesh, we engaged with 38 participants, including everyday users, bank employees, and policymakers, and investigated their experiences and perspectives associated with financial services. Our findings reveal a wide range of factors, naming intermediaries, terrorist assemblage, and re-skilling the existing employees that impede the mass adoption of cashless transaction services in Bangladesh. The findings from this study contribute to the ongoing discourse on the challenges and opportunities offered by the digitization of financial systems in Bangladesh. Our recommendations aim to improve the integration of the cashless systems within the societal context of Bangladesh and, more broadly, the Global South.

Financial technology (FinTech) platforms often exclude certain countries from their services due to global political conflicts. As a result, immigrants from these neglected countries struggle with transferring money to and from their homeland through formal mechanisms. Instead, they get involved in informal transnational transactions that, while flexible, are often risky and full of hassles. We looked into this issue through an online survey (n=127) and engaged with multiple stakeholders (n=16), including the Iranian immigrant community in Canada, to co-design an application called ?Kabootar' that matches senders and receivers of money across borders. In this application, a sender-receiver pair is matched with a pertinent pair sending money in the opposite direction. By facilitating two intra-national transactions in local currencies instead of two relatively complicated inter-national transactions, the need for money to cross borders is eliminated while staying within the boundaries of the law. Our user study (n=13) revealed several tensions in users trusting such informal transnational transactions. This work contributes to CSCW, HCI, and social computing's growing scholarship in personalized and collaborative computing technologies by advocating for a novel design approach based on collaboration and informality and extends their scope to the domain of FinTech for politically marginalized communities.

While the growth of financial technologies (FinTech) is making the flow of money faster, easier, and more secure, such technologies are often unable to serve many countries due to the global political environment. Despite its severe impact, this issue has remained understudied in the HCI literature. We address this gap by presenting our findings from a three-month-long ethnography with the Iranian community in Toronto, Canada. We present their struggles in transferring money to and from their home country - a process that entails financial loss, fear, uncertainty, and privacy breaches. We also outline the informal workarounds that allow this community to circumvent these challenges, along with the associated hassles. This paper contributes to broadening the scope of FinTech in the HCI literature by connecting it with the politics surrounding transnational transactions. We discuss the design implications of our findings and their contribution to the broader interests of HCI in mobilities and social justice.