Innovative Open Source On-line Banking Software Counters Economic Crisis with own Currency
Today, the Social Trade Organisation released its banking software Cyclos 3.6. With this release Cyclos has become the world's first professional free (open-source) on-line banking software. The new version has features such as mobile banking and card payments. Cyclos enables communities and regions to create their own currency, alongside the national currency.
- (1888PressRelease) December 16, 2011 - More than one hundred organisations worldwide use Cyclos to stimulate local development. With this release, the project aims to contribute to a strong growth in the use of Cyclos by organisations looking for ways to generate sustainable economic growth to counter the economic crisis.
Cyclos is developed and tested in Latin America and now offers the know-how and technology that can help the Western world to face the crisis. Cyclos is used in a wide variety of communities, from very small and social oriented to business communities.
Some examples are:
- A network of small businesses in Greece using their own currency to stimulate local trade (http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/world/europe/in-greece-barter-networks-surge.html);
- Regio-money in Switzerland (http://www.tauschenamfluss.ch);
- Trading network in El Salvador provides cheap loans to small companies (http://www.puntotransacciones.com); *
- Transition Town currencies in the UK (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/20/brixton-pound-local-currency); *
- In Uruguay the government, local authorities, the cooperative movement and private market parties will use Cyclos to realise cheaper credits for small businesses, to stimulate a more effective monetary circulation and to support the formalisation of informal businesses (http://www.c3uruguay.com.uy). *
* These projects also use SMS banking.
New tools for communities to boost their economy
Today's release of Cyclos 3.6 offers a complete on-line payment system with additional modules such as e-commerce, mobile banking and communication features capable to facilitate a range of applications from local currencies up to micro-credit mobile payments.
Cyclos also offers a set of monetary tools that allows communities and regions to stimulate their economy and reinforce their social structures.
Cyclos offers, amonst others 'buy local tools' facilitating a reward on buying with local currency and a fee for converting the local currency back to the national currency.
Demurrage is also supported. Demurrage is a very effective tool against crisis. It is a small tax on money that discourages households and firms to hoard money and by doing so keeping it out of circulation.
For more details and other examples please have a look at http://project.cyclos.org/newsletter/2011_12/press_release.html.
IT revolution wipes out the option of states to monopolize money.
Bank of England's governor Mervyn King (1999) was the first Bank-official to predict that IT would completely change the world of money and economics:
'...Central banks in their present form would no longer exist; nor would money... The successors to Bill Gates could put the successors to Alan Greenspan out of business.'
Cyclos offers state of the art technology for these types of new means of exchange.
About STRO
Social Trade Organisation develops monetary innovations that can contribute to more sustainable economies. For two decades STRO has been introducing a broad range of instruments and approaches to support private or public initiatives to make money work more effectively, even in conditions of a semi-permanent economic depression. Through research, STRO developed and tested economical models in pilot projects worldwide. To support these models STRO started the Cyclos project in 2003.
For further information regarding this press release please send an e-mail to press ( @ ) cyclos dot org or go to:
http://project.cyclos.org/newsletter/2011_12/press_release.html
Phone contacts:
English: - Jaap Vink +31 30 2314314
Spanish and Portuguese: - Camilo Ramada +598 24095024
Websites:
www.cyclos.org
www.socialtrade.org
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