This book exposes how, in our increasingly fintech-dominated societies, money quietly governs our everyday lives. Exploring digital payments, cashless systems and the growing reach of financial surveillance, it reveals a new form of power rooted in the risks, obligations and visibilities attached to money, arguing that financial systems are increasingly inseparable from regimes of punishment.

Through the lens of the ‘debt cycle’ - a movement between anxiety, hope, control and enforcement - the book shows how criminal justice institutions intensify these pressures through fines, seizures and coercive debt. It advances a new framework for understanding how financial systems entrench inequality and is grounded in extensive qualitative research with debt advice services and indebted households.