Beyond Just Money Transactions: How Digital P2P Payments (Re)shape Existing Offline Interpersonal Relationships

Abstract

Money is a sensitive and complex component of everyday life, which can significantly affect people's relationships with each other. Recently, emerging digital peer-to-peer (P2P) payment applications continue to complicate how people deal with money with individuals they know in comparison to traditional payment methods such as physical money (i.e., cash). Through an online survey study (N=218), in this paper, we investigate significant differences between using digital P2P payments and traditional payment methods (i.e., physical money) in terms of perceptions of transactions by using a given payment method, perceptions of people's existing interpersonal relationships with their known contacts after such transactions, and future use intention of a given payment method. We thus offer empirical evidence to highlight multidimensional influences of using digital P2P payments on established offline interpersonal relationships compared to using traditional payment methods (i.e., physical money). We also provide crucial new insights to unpack digital P2P payments as a novel technology-mediated interpersonal dynamic in people's everyday lives, which goes beyond merely as a business payment model or a financial service. We additionally provide important directions for designing more supportive and socially satisfactory digital P2P payment platforms in the future by taking the interplay of financial exchanges and interpersonal relationships into consideration.