Sharing economy has been able to generate huge sums for businesses and helped online businesses and even the physical businesses to generate huge revenue despite having huge participation from peer-2-peer sharing business model. Uber is the trailblazer in the sharing economy with hopes of generating an IPO worth USD 120 Billion. It has been estimated that the ride-sharing economy alone stands to generate as high as USD 5 trillion in terms of revenue in the next 5 years alone.
Airbnb is next and then there are personalized service delivery and items delivery services available that help businesses and individuals alike. But as one can imagine creating a trustworthy platform is very important on these business portals otherwise there is going to be a lot of hype without having a real user base that is willing to share their credentials let alone using that portal to in teract with other users. This is the very reason why there is a rating system in ride-sharing services and Airbnb has introduced an ID verification service for its host. Here is a roundup of technologies that must be utilized by sharing economy in order to not only make it more user-friendly but also trustworthy for end-users as well.
KYC verification
As mentioned earlier, the best thing to do before letting any customer use as haring economy based portal is to verify their credential. Not every facet of a user’s identity has to be verified but only the information required to process that user’s account on the said portal. So for an Airbnb listing, ID verification is sufficient while an address verification API is perfect for items delivery service.
Several regulators also have put forward certain regulations when it comes to customer data collection such as GDPR, so it is important for businesses to verify the identity of their customer and at the same time protect the information collected for verification. In the absence of a nearly impossible to breach databases, the collected verification data can fall into wrong hands leading to an unprecedented height of identity theft and scams originating from stolen identities.
Open Architecture Models
It is important for businesses to integrate with a service provider that has open networking architecture in place in order to integrate with other service providers. This opens up opportunities for not only better service delivery as the servers will be interacting directly with each other for data transfer but it also means that the data processing will also be streamlined. So when a room sharing service or a service that allows its users to share their used items with each other integrate an Address Verification API, all the addresses will be transferred from one business to another without having to be shared through an unsecured channel.
Additionally,the end-users will also be saved from the hassle of having to use multiple services just in order to avail service from a single service provider. The entire cycle will be hassle-free and the integration will be run smoothly.
Online Portals built on AI
Last,but not the least, Artificial Intelligence also holds the key for effectiveness of provided services and how they can be enabled to not only automate the entire process but also makes it swiftly complete it without having to involve any human resources. So, the KYC verification can be much more accurate when it uses simply bio metric verification with the help of facial recognition to allow multiple logins for its users. Addresses can be verified from a range of identity document as well as other official documents such as banking statements and utility bills when AI is utilized to perform Address Verification on behalf of sharing business.
Conclusion :
It has been long established that the online sharing economy can bring the next technological revolution by providing better services at a fraction of cost.With the above-stated technologies, it seems almost possible that sharing economy can be the key to deter fraud and provide synchronized user experience at the same time