Mastercard has today revealed the challenges and future opportunities surrounding the sharing economy, following a study undertaken by Mastercard and The Future Agenda. The whitepaper, The Sharing Economy: Understanding the opportunities for growth, investigates the specifics of the socio-economic ecosystem that empowers people to share accommodation, transportation, buying or selling of goods, on-demand professional services and sharing or renting of goods. By 2020, shared transportation and shared accommodation alone represent a combined market opportunity of almost $500 billion. Two years later in 2022, more sharing platforms will continue to proliferate, growing and segmenting the market with new innovation. Winners will emerge to dominate, consolidate and broaden their service offer, leaving incumbents to respond, in turn creating new ventures. As part of this, sharing will penetrate the mass market, with major sharing platforms growing to equal their traditional market equivalents. It will also spread into new sectors, including, insurance, utilities, health and social care. The biggest growth sectors are predicted to be*: · Crowdfunding/ lending: 63% · Online staffing: 37% · Peer-to-peer accommodation: 31% · Car sharing: 23% · Music and video streaming: 17% * Projected compound annual growth rate for key sharing economy sectors (% increase 2013-2025) The study has identified three inter-related themes around which future change will impact the sharing economy. Improved trust and transparency Trust remains the critical enabler of the sharing economy and has the potential to grow as the sector expands and people become more comfortable with the wide range of products and services that the sharing economy captures. But trust can only truly be achieved with improvements in technology and through advancements in regulatory approach and sophistication of peer to peer grading. As society adjusts to new models of commerce, regulation and business will need to partner to move from a reactive to a proactive stance, better-protecting consumers, providers and platforms alike. This will provide both a social safety net, and also create greater value for all who participate. Enhanced experience An enhanced user experience is vital to the growth and expansion of the shared economy and is what leaders need to achieve to engage their customers, further develop, and maintain legitimacy. To do this, platforms must embrace the crowd (user feedback), provide frictionless, secure transactions, and understand the importance and control of personal data to enable the individual to have greater control. Alongside technological advances, we must never lose sight of the human touch. Access to value As new ways to access emerge, greater value will be delivered to consumers and organisations alike. This access will be driven by technology, which unlocks new value through increasing use and reducing the cost of access. Examples of this include Blockchain, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI), which, if fully utilised, can power the shift from static to active: as more objects and people become interconnected, so the opportunity to share and benefit from access increases. Looking to the future, the report closes with the conclusions that guaranteeing trust and reputation, improving the experience and creating greater value are all essential for growth of the sharing economy. “The sharing economy is experiencing an extraordinary level of growth, transforming the fundamental way industries operate and people experience a variety of things,” said Mark Barnett, President, Mastercard UK & Ireland. “This report is designed to help us understand the opportunities and challenges today and help us unlock the potential of this fast growing phenomena. Not only does it address the challenges the sharing economy faces, it provides tangible solutions to these challenges and sheds light on the future of this exciting and fast-growing economy.”
Sharing economy platforms operating in transport and accommodation alone could be worth a combined $500bn by 2020, according to a whitepaper from Mastercard and The Future Agenda. Crowdfunding and peer-to-peer lending is predicted to be the fastest-growing sharing economy sector, with a CAGR of 63% between 2013 and 2025, followed by online staffing at 37%. New sectors will emerge and winners are expected to "dominate, consolidate and broaden their service". Trust, improving the experience, and creating greater value through interconnectivity will be pivotal to the sector's growth, summarised the report.