The rapid growth of the sharing economy in the last two decades may signal a paradigm shift in global capitalism and societal values. Digital platforms have brought together strangers with under-utilized capacities and assets with those who need them but who are not looking for ownership. The radius of trust, which was initially confined to family, friends and local communities, now encompasses strangers who speak no common language and who may live oceans apart. Trust, driven by Digital Identity (DI) and Trust and Reputation Information (TRI), has enabled what was considered improbable or even impossible some years ago. The further expansion and deepening of trust, based on new technologies combined with the international legal framework, has the potential to rewrite the apparatus of modern capitalism and societal values. Civil society and governments need to engage on this issue to guide them in a direction that is most beneficial to society. However, the current extraordinary situation due to the Coronavirus pandemic, coupled with the foreseeable tendency to complete digital control, is likely to have far-reaching impact on the future development of the sharing economy.

The business models of sharing economy services can differ fromeach other in different-sized cities. This paper provides a deeper understanding of the implementation of locally operating services for car, bicycle and office sharing in the urban environment. Our goal is to reveal the differences between the capital city and an economically well-developed city in order to provide beneficial findings to the development of the presently operating services, or to the possible implementation of future services. Methodology of the paper applies the Business Model Canvas approach (BMC). We introduce a comparative analysis using data from the Hungarian database, which records details of all the publicly visible sharing economy services countrywide. The results show that BMC can reflect the main differences, constraints and key elements in the business models of sharing economy services. We can say that, in the case of a bike sharing service operated in the non-capital city, there is more segmentation than seen in the same service in the capital. There are significant price differences, especially in the case of long-term tickets. The number of inhabitants and private capital remain the biggest constraints in the case of car-sharing services, but there is also a possibility of implementation in the non-capital cities by applying small-scale services with a good value proposition and segmentation.