Pay-per-use models, the backbone of a sharing economy: How to stimulate a sustainable human-centered ecosystem success to achieve a faster Society 5.0

Abstract

In Society 5.0 humans aim to leverage advanced technologies to create innovative solutions for social and environmental issues. Public awareness of the need to act now to shape a liveable future for the next generations and to set the course for a climate-friendly and sustainable future has reached its peak. This societal and political pressure is currently changing and will change industries, corporate strategies, buying behaviors, and society dramatically and lastingly in the coming years. Strengthening the concept of the sharing economy is essential to achieving the sustainability goals of Society 5.0. Effective and mature implementation of pay-per-use models is the heart of the sharing economy and essential to drive that concept to the next level. Due to their cost-effectiveness, flexibility, scalability, and predictability pay-per-use models are attractive to both businesses and consumers and offer several benefits. Pay-per-use is nowadays established as the standard for payment processes of native cloud services, electric vehicles, and many others, but the full potential is not exhausted, and currently serves as a payment model rather in niche areas. We will discuss how this can be changed, and what possible implementations could look like enabled with micropayments, cryptocurrencies, and distributed ledgers. We will provide the architecture overview and explain how it fits future (should we change for the future or leave current?) banking architecture. The implementation of frictionless payment models is a significant opportunity to improve customer perception and increase revenue by providing a more convenient, secure, and efficient payment experience and is, therefore, a win for the industry, consumers, and the environment. Finally, we describe what obstacles there have been so far in implementing, and what a roadmap to strengthen pay-per-use models and sharing economies might look like.

Keywords: Pay-per-use Society 5.0 IoT sharing economy Business models Financial Services

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004069