The Internet is making its way into every part of our lives. With the speed of adoption increasing, technical barriers are being lowered and we find our physical and digital lives beginning to integrate, creating a huge impact, especially on millennials. They are the first digital-native generation to be born into this world and the largest generation in history—significantly larger than the baby-boomer generation, and are expected to be in control of 24 trillion dollars of the world’s wealth by 2020. They are more likely to live in cities, they own fewer cars, and they choose their brands based on values like ethical sourcing, social justice, and environmental effects. They are looking for meaning, and often find it in making a positive impact on the community around them, thus creating a demand for financial community ties.
Technology is dramatically changing the way millennials make payments and consume other financial services. As physical cash is being replaced by digital means, from cards to mobile, they come to expect payments to be quick, safe, cool to use, and available 24/7. This creates pressure on merchants to broaden the means of payments they accept, in an effort to catch up with user demand. This pressure is especially burdensome for smaller merchants in today’s environment as they often pay the highest fees for payment processing, making for an uneven playing field for local initiatives.
Moreover, as a consequence of accelerating globalization, the diminishing frictions in cross-border commerce have incentivized corporate rent extraction through cost-externalization and the outsourcing of production. Encouraged by the continuation of open policies on multilateral trade, global supply chains have penetrated domestic markets, resulting in the incremental centralization of capital flows toward multinational organizations.
While the free movement of goods is imperative to open markets, SMEs (small to medium size enterprises) get the short end of the stick, being unable to compete in their native markets. In particular, small businesses with less than 10 employees make up over 93 percent of all enterprises in the EU and account for around two-thirds of employment.
In the US, small businesses account for 99.7 percent of firms with paid employees, and annually contribute almost 40 percent of US private, non-farm output. Yet, these small businesses often face difficulties accessing capital.
Colu Local Network (CLN)
