P2P: How a Pandemic Can Accelerate Adoption of New Technology

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.” – Buckminster Fuller

Dirty Money: Cash, Coronavirus and China

Money makes the world go ‘round. Cash is king. End of story, right? While the former might be true for another while in a mostly capitalised world, the latter could sooner or later be obsolete. As you might have noticed yourself, cash usage has generally been declining all over the world. Some of the questions people are asking now are: Why are we using less cash? Is this good or bad? How will this impact less fortunate people? How is COVID-19 impacting on this process?

Banking During a Pandemic

The Coronavirus pandemic is undoubtedly a crisis in every sense of the word. As it continues to rage across the globe infecting more than two million people, its effects are far-reaching leading to country-wide lockdowns and damaging the global economy. It has affected almost every sector of the economy, bringing most manufacturing and service sectors to a standstill. The Financial Services sector is another which is currently facing a lot of pressure from concerned customers and struggling businesses. However, this is not the first global crisis under which the Banking System has had to run and it presents new opportunities for further expansion and innovation amid the disarray.

Coronavirus and the Stock Market

COVID-19, often referred to as the Coronavirus, seemingly started in December, when Chinese officials found patients with Pneumonia of unknown cause. As the months went on, the virus spread past international borders, reaching across the globe. At the time of this blog, there have been over 1.4 million confirmed cases.

Introduction

The world is changing, yet, these are not unprecedented times. There has been a long list of events in the past that have disrupted our way of doing business and how we go about our lives. These events have affected us on a biological, psychological and an economic level. The only major difference between the past 40 year’s events and the Coronavirus is its abruptness and the shock it gave us on these three dimensions of our lives.