Payments Powering Platforms Tracker: How Payments Fuel Platforms

In the past few years, payments-powered platforms have become a critical part of the American economy.

Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and GoFundMe raised $34 billion in 2015, according to industry research, and as much as $60 million may have been raised last year, according to projections. But it isn’t just entrepreneurs, startups and charities benefitting from the rise of payments-powered platforms.

Resources like mHelpDesk and Buildertrend are helping plumbers, contractors and other small businesses manage their clients, track jobs and hire new employees in a simple and easy process. Tools offered by corporate platforms, such as marketing, accounting, email or web services, are helping companies of all shapes and sizes improve their products and processes. These platforms have even given consumers a chance to earn money, with freelancer-focused platforms, like Etsy, Uber and others, expected to account for 43 percent of the workforce by 2020.

Enter the Payments Powering Platforms Tracker, which has been designed to take a monthly look at the world of software providers embedding payments software inside of platforms. We’ll monitor the latest trends in the industry, what the biggest companies in the space are doing and what innovations or changes are coming down the road.

This inaugural edition of the Tracker features news on new fraud-fighting features from Visa, demonetization’s effects on India and the debut of new digital platform payments in the new year.

Building a better platform

For this month’s feature story, PYMNTS caught up with Scott Siegert, director at Buildertrend, to discuss how internet and mobile capabilities have shaped the payment-driven platform industry.

Siegert told PYMNTS that it’s crucial to rapidly adapt to new trends in technology and consumer expectations. He recalled that he and his team realized that, as smartphones became a fixture of modern life, the platform would need to work with the new technology and decided to push resources toward developing a stable, reliable mobile app that contractors could use from the field.

The inaugural Payments Powering Platforms Tracker also features the latest news and analysis and contains profiles and scores for 15 players in the space.

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To download the January edition of the PYMNTS.com Payments Powering Platforms Tracker, click the button below.

About The Tracker

The Payments Powering Platforms Tracker, powered by WePay, serves as a monthly framework for the space, providing coverage of the most recent news and trends, along with a provider directory highlighting the key players contributing across the segments that comprise the payments-integrated platform ecosystem.