Anyone who has kept an eye on the financial services landscape over the past decade will have noticed that digital technology is transforming and disrupting many traditional product markets. The latest innovation is from PayPal, an early pioneer in online payments, who are offering a smartphone app to help get your money back if you've lent it to family and friends.

The concept of the shared economy which brings peers together (P2P) is no longer something vague - it is transforming the foreign exchange market, the hotel and travel industry, and even helping people find car parking spaces.

Most significantly in the UK, P2P is changing a number of retail financial services markets including the provision of unsecured and secured loans to consumers and to small businesses and the supply of working capital to SMEs by means of invoice finance.