Marquette's FinTech course is highlighting the incredible impact of COVID-19 on e-commerce and e-finance
David Krause's students taking his FinTech Topics course this summer are learning about the amazing changes in people's financial activiites as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. The amount of e-commerce activity and the use of contactless payments have exploded around the glove since early March.
For example, based in San Francisco, Bolt is a developer of an online payment platform that is used by its clients to drive e-commerce businesses with new revenue. The firm has had several successful funding rounds recently, which is occurring at a time when e-commerce saw a massive surge in demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Online shopping was already a growing trend, but the pandemic has quickened the pace of adoption. Thanks to self-quarantines and shelter-in-place orders, people across the world were forced to purchase everything from food to consumer goods online. They had no choice but to get used to e-commerce and contactless payments, and now they are hooked.
"Brick and mortar were already on thin ice," said
Ryan Breslow, founder and CEO of Bolt. "COVID accelerated it. We're
in a lucky space. Investors understand commerce is changing at an unprecedented
rate. It took ten years for e-commerce to jump 11% and eight weeks during the
pandemic for the next 11% of growth." https://www.forbes.com/sites/donnafuscaldo/2020/07/16/armed-with-50-million-in-fresh-funding-bolt-helps-retailers-shift-to-ecommerce/#14fbc63e72ac
Dr. Krause's FinTech course will again be offered in the fall semester - and look for it to be offered online to non-Marquette enrolled students in the near future!
