Borrowing and How it’s Evolved Over Time

Overview

In life people get through tough times by borrowing. And borrowing can mean you need assistance with a number of things and it doesn’t always just equate to needing to borrow money.

Borrowing is probably one of the oldest behaviors in nature but gone are those days where you could pop into your neighbour’s home and borrow some sugar. Due to a number of factors that affect today’s society such as busy lifestyles leading to no time to really get to know your neighbours. The state of crime in the country, which has made a lot of people closed off behind their high walls. Also that these days we live in a very self-reliant culture that promotes independence rather than dependence on others, gone are the days of ubuntu.

And even though we as human beings are social animals we rather socialise through media platforms than through person to person contact. Constantly having our smartphones glued to our hands, face down interacting on our phones rather than with the people around us.

And to further prove this statement is the recent amount of apps created by numerous new companies that are making borrowing easier through technology. There’s Peerby which stands for a peer nearby. The app promotes borrowing of things like power drills and bicycle pumps by making it easy for people to connect and find that neighbor that’s willing to lend what they need. Founded by Norwegian Daan Weddepohl who said he had the idea for the startup after his house burned down, and he had to borrow everything.

Then there was or is not quite sure which as both seem to have quiet down the two startups that asks users to lend money to friends. Skylar Woodward’s Puddle, a service that declares you can borrow money from your social network instead of through traditional avenues like banks and credit cards. While Lendstar based in Germany allows friends to borrow and lend money using its mobile app.