Abstract
In recent years, two changes have begun to transform the South African banking sector. First, financial technology startups have emerged, offering payments and other services via bespoke mobile apps, powered by a combination of official access to bank application programming interfaces and unofficial screen scraping. Second, banks have expanded their mobile offerings through applications that connect to third-party messaging services from companies such as Facebook and Tencent. Proponents of these products emphasize their potential to facilitate financial access and to position South Africa at the forefront of digital innovation on the African continent. This article argues that this progressive Afrofuturist imaginary is belied by the political economy of "app-based banking," which facilitates a two-way tension between inclusion and consolidation. While digital finance has increased the competitiveness of the financial sector, it has also incentivized a commercial focus on more affluent consumers. Meanwhile, efforts to widen access through partnerships with social media companies have consolidated the market power of both monopoly banks and digital platforms, and facilitated the extraction of data from South Africa to the Global North. These dynamics of stratification, consolidation and extraction limit the developmental impact of digital finance, and render it potentially exclusionary.