Online platforms are a defining feature of the modern “digital economy,” underpinning many daily personal and professional activities. Today, their reach extends well beyond traditional information searching and social media interactions. Online platforms now play a significant role across various sectors including entertainment, media, transportation, accommodation, travel and tourism and financial services, among others. They also serve to enable the “gig economy” as new platforms for job matching, among other activities. By lowering search and matching costs, facilitating digital payments, and standardising trust mechanisms (e.g. ratings and dispute resolution mechanisms), platforms can lower certain transaction costs and expand cross-border participation in digital trade. At the same time, their rapid growth and increasing influence also raise important policy challenges – ranging from data governance and market concentration to labour conditions and consumer protection.
Among online platforms, DIPs have emerged as critical facilitators of e-commerce and digital trade. DIPs connect buyers and sellers, without ever taking economic ownership of the goods or services traded (IMF et al., 2023[1]). Their business model relies on providing digital intermediation services – such as matching, payment processing, and reputation systems – which underpin transactions across a wide range of sectors. What sets DIPs apart is their ability to reduce traditional frictions in market transactions, including search, co-ordination, and entry costs. This makes it easier for individuals and firms – particularly micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) – to engage in commercial activities. With the appropriate regulatory environment to participation in trade, DIPs help facilitate access to global markets and open new economic opportunities (Lendle et al., 2012[2]).
DIPs also enhance market dynamism by lowering transaction costs and fostering competition, which in turn drives innovation, improves service delivery, and broadens consumer choice. Their development supports productivity growth in service sectors, partly by reallocating labour towards more productive firms (Bailin Rivares et al., 2019[3]). Platform use is associated with higher labour productivity growth within sectors, particularly for small and mid-productivity firms, helping to narrow performance gaps between small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and larger companies – especially in more dynamic platform markets (Costa et al., 2021[4]). In practice, DIPs have already reshaped how people travel, shop, and access services, from booking accommodation to ride-hailing and online marketplaces.
Despite their growing importance, the global diffusion of DIPs remains uneven (Costa et al., 2021[5]). While some countries have successfully leveraged these platforms to stimulate digital transformation, others face or create policy and regulatory measures that hinder uptake – particularly for platforms operating across borders or headquartered abroad. Regulatory impediments to digitally enabled services trade can create friction that limits the reach and impact of DIPs, potentially reducing competition, innovation, and societal gains. At the same time, the growing influence of DIPs calls for continued attention to issues such as fair competition, tax policy, and trust in online environments.
While market openness is a necessary condition for the cross-border diffusion of DIPs, it is not sufficient on its own. Equally important are users’ access to affordable, quality and ubiquitous digital infrastructure, the skills to adopt and deploy digital technologies, regulations that are not overly complex and burdensome, and other aspects of the enabling environment. Otherwise, liberalised market access will do little to ensure platform diffusion for all (Casalini, López González and Moïsé, 2019[6]).
This paper contributes to ongoing efforts to better measure the diffusion of DIPs and understand their role in digital economies and societies. It develops new cross-country indicators of platform uptake and foreign presence across three major consumer-facing sectors: travel and accommodation booking, ride-hailing and carpooling, and business-to-consumer or consumer-to-consumer (X2C) online marketplaces. Using website traffic data as a proxy for platform reach, the analysis examines how regulatory measures on digitally enabled trade in services, as captured by the OECD Digital Services Trade Restrictiveness Index (DSTRI) (Ferencz, 2019[7]), are associated with platform diffusion across markets.