In the sleek, optimised world of digital finance, every tap, scroll, and notification is carefully engineered. But engineered by whom, and for what purpose?
As fintech platforms grow in sophistication, one truth is becoming increasingly clear: design is never neutral. Whether it’s a budgeting app nudging you to save €50 or a loan platform making a “one-click” credit offer, every interaction shapes behaviour. And increasingly, those behaviours are not the result of rational economic thinking, but of psychological design, often unacknowledged and unchecked.
This is where behavioural science enters the chat.
Drawing from psychology, behavioural economics, and cognitive science, it examines how real people, not theoretical actors, make decisions. And in finance, those decisions are rarely purely logical. We procrastinate, overspend, ignore risks, and act on impulse. We anchor to round numbers, fear losses more than we value gains, and often outsource judgement to default settings.
Consider the typical online banking app in Malta. Most display your balance first, but hide savings goals or debt repayments several taps deep. This isn’t malicious, but it’s telling. What we see first, we act on first. Visibility shapes priority.
Now imagine if instead, the app defaulted to showing savings progress, or estimated retirement income based on current habits. Imagine if banks and apps framed credit products with visual timelines showing long-term costs, or offered “cooling off” periods before accepting high-interest loans.
In the UK, the Behavioural Insights Team (known as the Nudge Unit) trialled messages that told people “9 out of 10 people in your area pay their taxes on time.” This small tweak improved payment rates dramatically, not by force, but by changing perception of the norm.
So why isn’t behavioural design more widespread in Maltese fintech?
Partly, it’s capacity. Many startups or legacy banks don’t have in-house behavioural experts. But more critically, there’s a lack of policy push. As regulators move toward protecting consumers in the digital space, ethical behavioural design must become a standard, not an exception.
Financial education also has a role. In classrooms, teachers can build critical thinking around default bias, peer pressure in spending, or the psychology of “free trials.” These aren’t abstract concepts, they’re daily digital dilemmas.
A 2023 OECD study found that across member countries, including Malta, only 38% of young people could identify misleading financial offers online, even if they had basic digital skills. This points to an urgent need for education that combines financial knowledge with behavioural insight.
At the upcoming Digital Finance Frontiers conference, we’ll explore how to embed these principles across platforms and policies, not just to make finance more efficient, but more humane. Because if we want financial technology to empower, not exploit, it must be built not just for humans, but with human behaviour at its core.
