Our 2021 Predictions

2020 was a year like no other. Bush fires, Pandemic, No Olympics, Trump, WAP, The Pentagon releasing UFO videos, Tiger King, Megxit, toilet paper to name a few. If you’re interested, you can see what Beemers got up too as well, in our ‘Year in review’ blog. 

But now that we’ve entered the new year, we thought we would take a look at what might happen in 2021?

Cashless Payments will continue to grow.

Cash will continue its mission to be a thing of the past with COVID and the world moving increasingly to a digital world. With cash withdrawals down by 38% last year and research from MyState Bank revealing that ⅔  of Australians have been using less cash, it seems like this is the way things are moving. 

This will hopefully mean we’ll see more Beem It usage and more ways to use the app (hopefully we’ll hit more than 2 million users by the end of 2021- that’s double the users of 2020). If you’re reading this, help the world become cashless in 2021 and invite some of your friends to join Beem It. It’ll make your payment moments a lot easier when you’re looking to pay a friend back or get paid. 

‘Dunch’ or ‘Linner’? The rise of going out at Lunch time.

‘Dinner’ was the second most popular description last year (behind ‘food’), followed by ‘lunch’. In 2021 we predict ‘lunch’ will overtake dinner as the more popular way of spending time with your friends and having a meal. Why do you ask? Going out around dinner is not as fun as it used to be with social distancing. You need to book to go places, so you can’t just stumble around place to place like you used to. Dance floors are also not what they used to be so lunch makes more sense now with friends. 

Spend more time long-lunching and still have time to go for an afternoon stroll to the park, beach or whatever you fancy. It’s also easier for it to flow into a dinner (especially with big groups). Who knows, maybe we’ll see the rise of ‘dunch’ or ‘linner’ (Dinner-lunch). Long-lunching can also be made easier with the increase to cashless payments. Make sure you’re using Beem It with your friends when splitting the bill to ensure everyone only pays what they should. 

Big house holidaying.

Holidaying anywhere outside of your state will be… a challenge in 2021. How do you have a holiday, spend money (intended for a Euro-trip) and still have the partying experience like you’re in Mykonos or Ibiza?

Big house holiday weekends! 

Get away for a long weekend with a few friends and family to a big house in one of the great towns near you. Tour the local sites and have a small party with all your friends giving back to the communities that have been hit so hard by 2020. Someone can purchase the board games, someone can purchase the food, someone can pay for the accommodation and then you can use ‘Beem It groups’ to calculate who owes what, that way everyone will finish the holiday not feeling ill about paying for more than they should have. 2021 will see a rise in more local tourism as more Aussies get out and explore their backyard.

Subscription wars ramps up 

The battle for your attention span will get even bigger in 2021 and you’ll probably have more of a need to ‘share’ subscriptions (and costs) with a few family members, so you can have as many options as possible. Stan’s introducing sports, with rugby, and I predict we’ll see a few more streaming services start to take on either bigger productions or will try to be more live TV. 

The subscriptions wars will mean that this year we’ll either see cinemas adapt to better experiences or they will perish. Warner Entertainment have already changed to releasing all their movies on HBO max and we’re sure to see more and more production houses do the same. So make sure you have access to Stan, Binge, Netflix, Disneyplus, Apple TV, Kayo, Amazon Prime, Hayu and whatever new platform will probably come out this year (HBO max?). If you’re the one who is paying for all the subscriptions and have a few ‘freeloaders’, make chasing them easier by requesting a payment. 

What do you think of our predictions for 2021? Let us know what you think will happen this year? If you have any ideas or suggestions on how we can improve connecting with each other, whether it’s an app innovation or something we could do at work, we would love to hear from you. We're working harder than ever to ensure you continue to have the best Beem It experience possible. Please share any other ideas that you would like us to incorporate into our next blog post here support@beemit.com.au.

What is Beem It?

Beem It allows you to pay, request, split and transfer money with anyone in your network, simply using your phone. Backed by eftpos, the app is easy, secure and free to download and use. Find out more about Beem It here.