ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the success and failure of financial sharing economy operations. It takes its inspiration from the increased plurality of the sharing economy and links business model design to trust and the financial performance of platforms, the latter to measure the platforms’ attractiveness for users and providers. Through analysing the business model design of a number of financial sharing economy operations, the chapter points at three archetypes of financial sharing-economy business models: the active investment in an idea, the banking clone, and the hybrid. Activities, their linkages, and who performs them vary with these archetypes, while the trustee and trust-facilitating activities also vary among them, making users, their ideas, or the platform the essential carrier of trust-establishing activities. The more trust relying on the user, the more affective it is, and the more limited the spread of providers. Contributions are made to the extant literature on the sharing economy through specifically focusing on financial platforms and through pointing to how trust varies with business model designs.
