The Digital Marketplace, The Gig Worker And The Payments Conundrum

Gig workers — and the gig economy itself — are becoming an ever-more integral piece of the workaday landscape.

Taking on project-based work?  No longer a side hustle where the gig is one that helps a family or an individual make ends meet.

Turns out that gig workers are taking on that model by choice.  In the Gig Economy Index, we found that 58 percent of gig workers who make their living from this model do not, in fact, want to take on a full time job.

In the latest Gig Economy Index, the responses of 10,000 workers queried by PYMNTS bore out the sentiment that a sea change is afoot.

Karen Webster and Hyperwallet SVP of Digital Markets Michael Ting found that the numbers told a tale, examined in the latest Data Drivers.

Want to know what it’s like to be a gig worker?  Turns out that online marketplaces are providing value — but where there is still room for improvement (especially in payments!) — and where demographics may not be, well, what you expect.  The marketplace is a bit grayer than you might think.

Said Ting: “It’s a trend that we’re seeing continue to grow.  I think more and more people are becoming comfortable with this from both sides of the transaction,” he said of employers and workers — and both sides of the relationship are increasingly comfortable with meeting up via online marketplaces.

The payments part of the equation can use a boost, as discussed by Ting and Webster.  Even as the online marketplaces have evolved, and thicker in what Webster called the “long tail” of services that can be provided, across the globe and across a 24/7 timeframe, the payments conundrum still exists.

As noted by Webster, a consistent experience in getting workers paid is lacking.  She pointed to the past report that said that 85 percent of gig workers would do more gigs if they did not have to wait so long to get money.

Want to find out what might be the solution and what needs to be done?

Click here.