Today In Data: Alternative Banking, Innovation Budgets And Transportation Expenses

Today in PYMNTS data, payments apps are pushing banking outside the traditional system, top-performing businesses are allocating big budgets to innovation, ground transportation costs are seeing redistributions, gig workers want easier and better ways to get paid and small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are spending countless hours handling manual business lending paperwork.

Here are the numbers:

270 million | Number of bank accounts opened using the Aadhaar payments app, according to analyst estimates, meaning more transacting and banking is being done outside the traditional system. The Indian program provides individuals with a 12-digit ID code based on location and biometric data.

75 percent | Portion of payments budgets that top-performing businesses allocate toward innovation projects, according to the most recent PYMNTS Innovation Readiness Playbook™, an i2C collaboration. The study also found that 67 percent of mid-sized financial institutions (FIs) are allocating less than one-quarter of their budgets toward the same goals.

56 percent | Percentage of ground transportation expenses Uber secured for travel and expense company Certify’s customers in 2017, up 52 percent in 2016. The ridesharing industry overall landed 68 percent of 2017 ground travel spend, towering over car rentals (25 percent) and traditional taxis (7 percent).

51 percent | Portion of gig workers who were paid within one week of rendering their services, according to PYMNTS research for the most recent Disbursements Tracker™. That’s down from 63 percent in Q3 2017, indicating that more gig workers’ wages are being delayed even further — but the gig economy is slated to represent roughly 43 percent of the U.S. workforce by 2020.

25 | Number of hours it can take for SMBs to manually prepare and submit paperwork for the business lending process. The package must include the laundry list of financial records lenders want to review: balance sheets and financial statements, tax returns, accounts payable and receivable and details about the vendors on those lists, as well as details about outstanding loans and tax returns.