New publication: The Book on Credit Cards
History and Theory of Digital Payment
by Sebastian Gießmann (Universität Siegen, SFB)
In his latest publication, Sebastian Gießmann demonstrates how seemingly mundane practices—such as paying at the supermarket or via an app—transform into complex media practices. Digital payment emerges not merely as a technical innovation, but as a political arena in which issues of consumption, control, and the future of cash are being renegotiated.
About the Book
Cash or card? Or perhaps an app or blockchain? Sebastian Gießmann’s fast-paced history of the credit card takes us into the hidden worlds of digital payments. For the first time, it reveals how our digital present in North America began with a small plastic card, what magnetic stripes and chips actually mean, and how Europe could one day become a leader in digital payments. Gießmann elegantly guides readers into the secret inner workings of banks, credit card organizations, and computerized high-tech security. He acknowledges the everyday nature of transactions as well as the absurd “true crimes” of credit card fraud. The Credit Card Book explores the truth behind advertising slogans, company logos, and TV commercials. How we pay is political. Social participation and difference, consumption, financial surveillance, the future of cash: nothing less than our economic identity is at stake in digital payments.
“A brilliant study in media and cultural studies—methodologically groundbreaking and empirically rigorous.” – Anna Echterhölter
Sebastian Giessmann is a senior lecturer in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Siegen and PI of A01 “Digital Network Technologies between Specialization and Generalization” of the Collaborative Research Center 1187 – “Media of Cooperation.”About the author