Whether or not you are familiar with the term sharing economy, you have probably addressed it in one form or another by now. The sharing economy is the fastest-growing business trend in the world, with over $23 billion dollars of investments.
You are already familiar with it. Sharing economy is the system that uses technology to facilitate the exchange of goods and services between private individuals. Since it involves such tech giants as Airbnb, eBay, Netflix and Uber, it is clear that sharing economy is disrupting a history of traditional business. However, it does not only involve sharing apps. Sharing economy also includes collaborative consumption, peer-to-peer economy, freelancing, crowdfunding, coworking, and cobranding. Therefore, many traditional industries are being affected by sharing economy, and they will struggle even more if they don’t adapt to the trend.
Why did the sharing economy become so popular?
Digitalization has been the main driver of various disruptive innovations in the business. The development of transaction and peer-to-peer reviewing apps has facilitated people’s trust in online sharing.
On top of that, new consumer groups of millennials and Gen Zs, who are the main audience of the sharing economy, are much more comfortable with accessing goods without actually owning them. The ownership usually puts the sense of liability on these generations, while using shared services still includes all of the benefits, and eliminates the risks connected to the possession of goods.
These consumer groups also, more than others, are concerned about climate change and sustainable life. The majority of sharing platforms have convincing statements on how sharing positively affects the environment, eliminating waste and pollution.
What’s next for sharing economy?
As the sharing economy has appeared in the result of digitalization, we can expect it to become even more advanced technologically, and people to become more digitally connected. So far, we have seen how the sharing economy successfully disrupted the entertainment (Netflix), transportation (Uber), consumer goods (eBay), travel (Airbnb), fashion (Depop) and many other industries. With the evolvement of technological solutions, we can expect more closed industries, such as finance and banking, to go fade into the background. The sharing economy has already entered these industries with P2P lending and insurance, crowdfunding, and social payments. 8 in 10 of customer interactions with banks is already about paying for goods or services (McKinsey). With such trends as embedded banking and sharing economy, we can expect that any operation with financial services and banking industry will be integrated into the service, making them invisible to the consumer. What could it mean for businesses?
For businesses, it may mean that they will have to look for solutions to implement financial and banking services into their operations. The sharing economy implies the convenience of acquiring, using, and paying for goods and services in the moment. In order to provide this convenience to their customers, businesses will need to create embedded payment systems. This is a very complicated technology to develop on their own. However, there are already software platforms that provide rails and infrastructure for anyone who would like to create such solutions. Crassula allows launching products within one week to address the needs and problems of cross — border payments and transfers connecting people contactless. Crassula products could help many companies to create technical solutions, not only reducing the cost of the system’s development and maintenance but also accelerating the shift towards embedded payments.
The world has changed and the financial industry is facing an uncertain future. A solution for the industry to stay in the game and successfully survive the disruptive way of sharing economy is to integrate payments and banking operations into the service, creating a seamless experience for the customer. It is necessary to view financial services and banks as a part of services rather than a separate entity. The industry is evolving rapidly, and therefore, there is not a lot of time to waste. Learn more about how you could embed the financial services into your business by booking a demo slot with Crassula through this link: https://forms.gle/8EJhgYTufrkFbP2M7
Visit https://crassula.io/ to learn more about how we can help you.
