I would rather not have the kind of "financial innovation" that requires non-free apps running on non-free operating systems on locked down hardware. These apps, by design, track how people spend their money.
Traditional banks have about as much data about how you spend your money as any modern fintech. The banking system is non-free, locked down and centralized to begin with. How you access it is just a matter of cosmetics and policies.
> These apps, by design, track how people spend their money.
That depends - In India, for example, I am free to use either (1) a private company's app (like PayTM, Google Pay, PaisePe etc.) (2) a Government app or (3) my Bank's app to make digital payment using the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) (or all 3). And, if I don't want to use any mobile app, I can still make offline payment through my mobile phone over USSD - https://razorpay.com/blog/how-to-make-offline-upi-payments/ ...
(You are right though that it is prone to abuse in the absence of strong privacy and data protection laws - digital payment does allow new form of surveillance capitalism to the corporates and new avenues of authoritarian control to the government).
