Financial platforms as alternative financial instrument to crediting in Europe

Abstract

The significance of financial technologies constantly grows as they have become a part of national economies. Sharing economy or alternative financing includes various digital financial activities outside the traditional banking system like crowdfunding, peer-to-peer lending and other alternatives. The research aim is to evaluate alternative finance trends in Europe. The research results show that peer-to-peer platforms mainly ensuring a high return rate have recently become very popular allowing to invest resources in various projects including real estate, loans, invoice trading and businesses. The main significant drawback of these platforms is that they are risky. The alternative finance market volumes continue to increase steadily year by year reaching USD 22.60 billion in 2020 and the United Kingdom has the largest market share of 59.35% (USD 12.6 billion) in 2020. At the beginning of 2022, there are 315 alternative finance platforms in Europe, the largest number of alternative finance platforms operate in the UK, and peer-to-peer lending (both consumer and business) and invoice trading are three the most widespread types of alternative finance in Europe covering 68% of the entire market size. The rest types of alternative finance occupy considerably lower market shares, i.e. 3-7% each. The decrease in P2P lending volumes in 2020 might be directly related with the Covid pandemic and change in consumer priorities; though, the dynamics of P2P business lending shows a constant moderate increase in the lending volumes.