Co-Creating the Future of Finance : Strategic Foresight and Participatory Scenario Building in the Digital Payments Ecosystem

This thesis explores how strategic foresight methods, specifically horizon scanning and scenario development, can be applied to the future of digital payments to identify strategic opportunities for financial institutions and service providers. As payment systems become increasingly digital, decentralized, and personalized, this research responds to a growing need for frameworks that enable stakeholders to navigate uncertainty and anticipate long-term change. Furthermore, this study is positioned at the intersection of media technology, finance, and strategic innovation. The research follows a qualitative, exploratory design across three phases. Phase 1 used horizon scanning to identify megatrends, signals of change, and drivers of transformation in the payment landscape. Phase 2 involved ten semi-structured interviews with professionals in Sweden, Brazil, Denmark, and Serbia, using a scenario-based format grounded in the Change Progression Method (Baseline, Marginal, Adaptive, and Radical). Phase 3 tested and refined a Digital Foresight Workshop prototype with future users, applying participatory foresight methods to validate and expand the scenario narratives. The findings reveal key tensions in the digital payments landscape such as trust and automation, personalization and surveillance, and innovation and institutional inertia. Interviewees favored adaptive scenarios focused on integration, ethics, and inclusion, while radical imaginaries triggered concerns about control, identity, and systemic disruption. The study contributes both a methodological framework and a practical foresight tool that bridges expert and user perspectives.