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The Broker Economy

Frequently you hear services like Über and Airbnb referred to as being part of the sharing economy. Sharing is generally free and not monetizable. We are in the middle of a Broker Economy boom. Über and Airbnb are brokers who bring suppliers and customers together through a simple interface. 

Their killer feature isn’t connecting people either, it’s seamlessly processing the transaction with next to no friction. I love that I can load my credit card into the app and trust that they will charge me when I receive the value of the transaction. No cash needed and my payment information is completely unknown to the supplier. 

Contrast that with the average taxi ride in Minneapolis. If I want to pay with credit card, more often than not, the driver will pull out a machine that makes a carbon copy of my card. Now the driver has a copy of my credit card numbers and who knows what might happen to them from that point forward.

Published in General