A lot of articles and studies discuss our move towards a more freelance/gig economy as opposed to traditional full time work. I am not going to touch on my thoughts about that in this video, however, I do want to talk about how a move towards a freelance/gig work space would impact the world of payments.
Being a freelancer myself, I understand the challenge of getting paid. It is hard to get paid as a freelancer. When you work a traditional full time job you get paid on a regular basis and your taxes are taken care of for the most part. With freelance/gig workers this is not the case. Your payments are based on what your clients propose. You could have a couple of great months and then a period where you don’t know where your next payment will come from. And getting paid itself is a chore. You have to submit your bank information and W9 to clients every time you get paid. On top of that you have to manage your own taxes.
I think these issues present a unique opportunity to people in the payment space such as banks and other financial institutions. What if your bank could act more like an advisor, educator or friend? What if they could step up and help freelancers by making the whole process more user friendly? It would be so helpful to have someone who could track and analyze where your payments are coming from. They could help you analyze work patterns and figure out what quarters will be good and which ones will not be so good, therefore helping you decide when to put money aside. What if payments could be made in real time instead of having to wait 2-5 days to receive them?
Another great idea would be if a financial institution could come up with a financial dashboard where you could go in and access all of your financial information in one location. Maybe they could even have a button to push where it could send you your financial profile including your bank information and W9 so you could easily forward it to clients.
Unfortunately I don’t think financial institutions have wrapped their minds around what it means to be a freelancer yet, and therefore they are missing out on a huge opportunity. They are still stuck in the mindset of traditional full time work, but I think this will change in the next few years.
How do you think banks could step up and help freelancers? Use #AskTheFuturist on Twitter to share your thoughts. You can also use the hashtag to ask me a question for a future episode.
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Jacob Morgan is a keynote speaker, author, and futurist. You can invite Jacob to keynote your next conference, subscribe to his videos on Youtube, check our his podcast, or subscribe to his newsletter!
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