The Card of Our Destiny: A Tale of Subject-Object Financial Algorithm

A credit card is a symbol of different types of consumer credit. Their use to satisfy consumer needs can trigger impulsive spending, often leading to addiction and even debt bondage. This study follows the activities of a credit card community in Indonesia and includes ethnographic fragments in which credit cards are not used for consumptive purposes but rather as productive business capital. Temporality, as a concept in the anthropological study of debt and credit, is used as a research framework as well as a strategy to comprehensively analyse the credit card algorithm from a cultural perspective, including the characteristics and functions of credit cards that are reflected in the decision-making of community members throughout the life cycle of the credit card, from application to business use, which enables this financial facility to provide benefits and maintain trust.