The Future of Money Award has been running since 2009 and was created to develop links between the financial industry and creative practitioners from around the world. This is achieved by awarding the opportunity to present thought-provoking ideas to a group of financial experts and industry leaders during Money20/20 Europe in Amsterdam. 

Arguably there has been no greater time of financial uncertainty than today and no greater need for fresh ideas and imaginative insights which help inform, suggest and question our current technological, social and cultural direction.

BRIEF: Design the financial crime of the future

Crime, whether we like it or not, is a driving force behind a large proportion of technological ‘progress’.  In 1817, a burglary at a British dockyard led the government to start a competition, challenging locksmiths to invent an unpickable lock.  The result was the Chubb detector lock, and it remained ‘unpicked’ for 33 years.

In the past, adding another lock, or increasing the wall thickness of a safe was the obvious solution to deter theft.  However, money is no longer physical, it is now predominantly a data set shared via telecommunications, secured via encryption, transacted via smartphone or exchanged into V-bucks.  As our money becomes completely electronic, new crimes will undoubtedly be committed, which take advantage of the technology itself or the social conventions on which it rests.  Perhaps if we could imagine what crimes might happen, we could start to think about how to prevent them.

What financial crimes could be committed within a completely electronic marketplace?

We invite creative practitioners to employ a speculative design approach and design a future financial crime.  A crime which utilises a new loophole, a change in social convention or specific technology development.

(Note - Do not commit a real crime!  This competition is only interested in the ‘speculative’ i.e. the potential, not a real world investigation or intervention)