PROFESSOR ATUL K. SHAH www.atulkshah.co.uk
Globally renowned expert advisor and broadcaster on culture, accounting, finance, business ethics, holistic education and leadership
In the age of apps and algorithms, fintech is everywhere—from mobile lending in Nairobi to crypto wallets in San Francisco. It promises speed, scale, and access. For many, it’s a symbol of disruption: a chance to break free from the gatekeepers of traditional finance and open the money system to broader participation.
But here’s a deeper question:
Can fintech be organic?
Can it serve not just efficiency, but life?
📲 Fintech’s Promise: Access, Speed, and Scale
Financial technology has achieved remarkable things. Mobile money platforms like M-Pesa have extended financial access to millions who were previously unbanked. Crowdfunding tools have enabled artists, activists, and entrepreneurs to raise capital without going through traditional intermediaries. Blockchain projects claim to decentralize trust and reduce friction in global transactions.
These are not small feats.
But while fintech opens new doors, it often carries old assumptions—about what finance is for, what counts as value, and who gets to decide.
⚠️ Where Fintech Breaks From Life
Most fintech today runs on the logic of speed, extraction, and abstraction.
- Speed, because instant decisions and real-time trading are the competitive edge.
- Extraction, because user data is the new oil—mined, monetized, and sold to the highest bidder.
- Abstraction, because the human context of money—relationships, culture, ecology—is stripped away in favor of sleek interfaces and gamified metrics.
Consider Robinhood. It “democratized” stock trading, but at what cost? It incentivized risky behaviors and profited from users’ losses through payment-for-order-flow.
Or Klarna. It made credit feel frictionless—but also normalized impulse borrowing, leading many into cycles of micro-debt.
These platforms may be innovative, but they often deepen the very problems they claim to solve: inequality, opacity, and disconnection.
🌱 What Is Organic Finance?
Organic Finance is a different way of thinking about money.
It doesn’t reject technology—but insists that finance must be embedded in life, not detached from it.
It calls for:
- Slowness over speed: relationships before transactions
- Reciprocity over extraction: wealth that circulates, not concentrates
- Ethics over neutrality: asking not just can we do this, but should we?
- Local governance over centralized platforms: people shaping the financial tools they use
Organic Finance is rooted in Indigenous credit systems, feminist mutual aid, regenerative economics, and spiritual traditions that see money as a form of moral energy—not just a metric.
🤝 Where Fintech Can Align with Organic Principles
Fintech, when reimagined, can serve Organic Finance. Here’s how:
1. Digital Infrastructure for Mutualism
Imagine a fintech platform designed not to maximize profits, but to support community wealth. Mutual credit systems like Sardex (Italy) or the Bangla-Pesa (Kenya) show how tech can power relational finance—where value flows through networks of trust, not just collateral.
2. Localized, Ethical Lending Tools
Fintech can empower savings cooperatives, village banks, or women-led lending circles with transparent digital records, mobile access, and ethical risk assessments. Instead of scraping user data, it can be guided by community consent and cultural context.
3. Moral Ledgers and Transparent Impact
What if fintech interfaces visualized not just your balance, but your ecological footprint, local economic impact, or social reciprocity? Tools like Circles UBI or Regen Network are experimenting with this kind of “moral accounting.”
🧭 Rethinking Fintech’s Design Ethos
To bring fintech in line with Organic Finance, we must shift its philosophical foundations.
| Fintech Today | Organic Fintech |
|---|---|
| Speed | Slowness and care |
| Data mining | Consent-based sharing |
| Individualism | Mutualism |
| VC exit logic | Stewardship for the commons |
| Gamification | Embodied trust |
It’s not about discarding technology. It’s about infusing it with story, ethics, and soil.
✨ A Living Example: What Might This Look Like?
Picture a platform built not in Silicon Valley, but with a rural women’s cooperative. It lets members save together, access emergency credit, and vote on how surplus funds are used in their village. Its interface is not addictive—it’s affirming. It honors elders, reflects local languages, and logs not just money, but care.
That’s not speculative. It’s already happening—in pockets. What’s missing is recognition, support, and narrative power.
🔮 Final Thought: Toward a Regenerative Tech-Finance Future
Fintech doesn’t have to be extractive. But without intervention, it will be. Its default mode is optimization for capital, not care.
Organic Finance offers a different compass.
It asks: Can money systems be instruments of life, not control?
Can technology serve community flourishing, not just venture returns?
Can finance return to its sacred roots—as a medium of trust, reciprocity, and shared destiny?
If the answer is yes, then fintech must slow down—enough to listen.
Let’s build tools that are not just frictionless—but fearless. Not just scalable—but sacred.
That is the future of Organic Finance.