When our meandering money leaves a mark

A cup of coffee, a grab of hot samosas, a premium movie ticket, the book you bought, a health insurance policy you opted for, a stock or mutual fund you invested in, a debt you cleared and what not? From the first Rupee spent to the last one of the month, our financial journey is increasingly out there in the open. Not just us; our money’s meandering voyage is also under the scanner.Money has always left clues in every hand it touches. For instance, from the ledger books of ancient times, one could glean how affluent or frugal a family was, how much it spent, how much it saved and how much it borrowed. Yet, following such a manual trail, leaf by leaf through voluminous, timeworn tomes, was an arduous task, like tracing a tiny creature through a dense forest by the faint paw marks it left behind. In stark contrast to the dust-ridden ledgers, today, we live in the era of digital wallets. The money-paws of our transactions can be traced from mice to monkeys to monsters, all at the click of a button.Where money once left a paper trail, it now casts a perpetual digital shadow. So, what happens when a stranger wanders into our digital woods?To cut a long story short: If every Rupee leaves a trace, are we giving away a slice of our ‘financial privacy’? Every single Rupee we spend can reveal something about us: our tastes, interests, habits, preferences, priorities and even our way of life. A transaction may record an amount, but a trail of transactions can reveal who a person actually is.Yet, safeguarding our so-called ‘financial privacy’ does not mean that we must return to a time when our money’s journey left fewer footprints. Once we progress, there is no looking back to the dusty past. No doubt, digital money is the way forward, and for predominantly good reasons: instant payments, round-the-clock access to financial services, automatic records of transactions, easier tracking of monthly expenditure, seamless payment of subscriptions, instant execution of investments, quicker loan processing, instant alerts for unusual or fraudulent transactions, handy proof of payments, reduction in the costs of printing or handling currency, and much more. Why should we lose all these advantages in the name of ‘privacy’?Yet, on the flip side, the very convenience that digital money offers comes with a trade-off. The same digital trail that makes our financial lives faster also creates a vast pool of information about us. The question now is not whether we should leave a digital trail at all in the first place, but to know how we can use that information to study our own financial behaviour and be aware of what happens to the information left behind.This drives us naturally to another question: who gets to see this information, and what protection does the law provide for it? The Constitution of India recognises privacy as a fundamental right; but does that extend to our financial lives as well? After all, the right to privacy is not an absolute right to live without leaving any trace. The Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023 addresses this tension.While the Constitution provides the foundation for our fundamental right to live with dignity and autonomy, the DPDP Act provides a modern legal framework to protect personal data in the digital world. Perhaps, the DPDP Act is a form of digital armour. It acts as a guardrail by regulating how our personal data is collected, processed and used. The law labels the banks, apps, and platforms that determine why and how our personal data is processed as Data Fiduciaries. Thus, the information in our meandering money trail is not a ball that can simply be passed from one player to another; legal safeguards come into play at every stage.Let’s face it. We may not have much say in stopping the digital trails that feed external algorithms. Yet, we can turn the same trail into a money mirror: one that tracks our cash flow, spots leakages, curbs unnecessary expenditure and helps us make better investment choices. The trail that tells others about us can also teach us about ourselves. Perhaps, the real power lies not in erasing our money footprints, but in learning to notice them, interpret them and, ultimately, master our own money.(Dr. Sincy Wilson is an assistant professor of Law and a legal researcher specialising in constitutional and administrative law. Dr. Vaishali R. Venkat is an NISM & CRISIL-certified Wealth Manager and certified in NISM’s Research Analyst module)