The rise of mobility platforms contributes to encouraging and commodifying movements of citizens. In line with many smart city apps anticipate their users to be mobile bodies, viewing them normatively and financially valuable (Rose et al., 2020). A colleague of Minwoo who commuted by tube would take off a couple stops before where many pubs were located. He then signed into Kakao Driver to drive a drunken customer home in his neighbourhood. This way, he could earn money while going home, driving someone else’s car. Similarly, many couriers, instead of logging off after their supposedly last delivery, would keep their Baemin Connect app signed in until they get home in case they get an order that is broadly headed in the direction of their home. Having learned to turn her steps into money by working with Baemin, Eunyoung did not want to ‘walk for free anymore’. If Uber and Airbnb capitalise on idling cars and properties, now idling bodies are mobilised by mobility platforms to generate capital. Instead of idling, moving their bodies to deliver food was seen by my interviewees as a way of using time ‘productively’ and the platform granted them a means to ‘mine money’ (Kyungsoo) on the road. Walking and financial rewards are increasingly related in multiple ways and often with the assistance of gamification. Cashwalk, an app that pays their users for walking became popular with 3.6 million daily users and 18 million accumulated downloads (E. Koh, 2023). Wooribank, one of the largest commercial banks in Korea, launched a savings product self-explanatorily named Daily Walking Regular Savings (Y. Lee, 2022). The direct association between movement and money combined with a gamified nature causes couriers to ‘voluntarily’ set their own target.
References:
Koh, E. (2023, January 27). 의사와 개발자가 만든 앱…한번도 적자 내지 않은 비결은 [긱스] [The app developed by a physician and a software engineer…How did it grow without ever making a loss [Geeks]]. The Korea Economic Daily (Hankyung). https://www.hankyung.com/it/article/202301181457i.
Lee, Y. (2022, November 22). “걸으면 금리가 최고 연 11%” 우리은행 ‘데일리 워킹 적금’ 출시 [“Annual interest up to 10% if walking” Woori Bank ‘Daily Walking Regular Savings’ launch]. Economist. https://economist.co.kr/article/view/ecn202211220088.
Rose, G., Raghuram, P., Watson, S., & Wigley, E. (2020). Platform urbanism, smartphone applications and valuing data in a smart city. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 46(1), 59–72. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12400.