Episode 88 - Digital Marketplaces Go Global - Tomas Likar, Hyperwallet

The digital marketplace model brings together buyers and sellers and, frequently, handles the money and payouts to the sellers. As my guest today has determined, digital infrastructure, e-commerce usage, competition, and workforce characteristics influence a country's ability to establish a flourishing marketplace component to the economy. This marketplace economic model is a useful one enabling, among other use cases, the gig economy. Adopted in countries like China, the US, Canada, the UK, Australia, and other established markets, this episode's guest, Tomas Likar, Head of Business Development and Strategy at Hyperwallet, has done a lot of thinking about its role in these and other countries. This podcast was prompted by Hyperwallet's February 2019 release of its Marketplace Expansion Index report, the MEI, that evaluated the marketplace readiness of some 36 countries. A surprise is the early stage of marketplace adoption in a number of otherwise highly developed countries. The application of the marketplace model to human labor is, of course, not without controversy and concern. Steady employment with guaranteed benefits is no longer an attribute of employment in many countries, replaced by the uncertainties of the gig economy. That's the downside concern. On the other hand, these marketplace services provide access to otherwise unavailable work and that is good news for individual and, by extension, domestic economic well being. Take a listen to this conversation with George and Tomas Likar of Hyperwallet for an overview of marketplace adoption and the variables affecting its uptake.