  Since the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have faced unprecedented challenges
when trying to remain open. Because COVID-19 spreads through aerosolized
droplets, businesses were forced to distance their services; in some cases,
distancing may have involved moving business services online. In this work, we
explore digitization strategies used by small businesses that remained open
during the pandemic, and survey/interview small businesses owners to understand
preliminary challenges associated with moving online. Furthermore, we analyze
payments from 400K businesses across Japan, Australia, United States, Great
Britain, and Canada. Following initial government interventions, we observe (at
minimum for each country) a 47% increase in digitizing businesses compared to
pre-pandemic levels, with about 80% of surveyed businesses digitizing in under
a week. From both our quantitative models and our surveys/interviews, we find
that businesses rapidly digitized at the start of the pandemic in preparation
of future uncertainty. We also conduct a case-study of initial digitization in
the United States, examining finer relationships between specific government
interventions, business sectors, political orientation, and resulting
digitization shifts. Finally, we discuss the implications of rapid & widespread
digitization for small businesses in the context of usability challenges and
interpersonal interactions, while highlighting potential shifts in pre-existing
social norms.
