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Peer-to-Peer Banking w/ Shared Value Communities



Take this idea from Svenson:

Imagine a peer-to-peer search engine, where the pages are indexed by surfers computers as they visit them, and everybody answers searches that get sent to them. (So you query the computers of peers on the network instead of Google.com)…… the idea that the data that is most relevant to you will be the data that is most relevant to people in your SVC.

And apply it to what I just wrote about eliminating ATM fees, and banking technology innovations in general. For good measure, throw in a dash of these three articles as well, and my piece on creatively escaping money.

What you would end up with would be something like social lending meets BitTorrent. In the case of eliminating ATM fees, the system could temporarily utilize someone else’s account in your shared value community who has an account with the bank which owns whatever ATM you’re using. Then, instead of paying a fee to the ATM, you could potentially deposit a tiny amount into the person’s account which you were operating through - in addition, to obviously covering whatever amount of money which was withdrawn.

There are a bunch of references to p2p banking online, but none of them are using it in quite the same way as I’m describing. I’m also curious to find whether there are any social lending sites (like Zopa, for example) who can issue debit cards, like in the way that PayPal does. I really hate PayPal and how much of a cut they take on everything - that’s part of why I’d like to see innovations in this area.

  1. Peer-to-Peer Banking on CNNMoney
  2. Peer-to-Peer Banking by Ross Dawson
  3. Duck9, a social lending site aimed at students
  4. Peer to Peer Banking and Distributed Business
  5. Social networking for dollars
  6. Peer 2 peer banking - Would you lend cash to a stranger?
  7. Prosper’s Peer-To-Peer Lending Promises An eBay For Money






5 Reader Responses

  1. Svenson Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 6:05 pm

    Wow! The good ideas just never cease with you, I swear. You’ve taken that one to the next level.

    This kind of thing is *truly* revolutionary to me. I wish we could move beyond trying to create change by writing letters to the editor or standing on the street with signs or whatever other useless nonsense and focus and ideas like this, where we actually get to work building the world to be a better place…

  2. Julia Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 10:04 pm

    I’ve never heard of this except the below linked situation.

    http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/banking/hawala.html

    Be careful with wording and legal technicalities though.

    https://www.interpol.int/Public/FinancialCrime/MoneyLaundering/EthnicMoney/

  3. Svenson Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 11:05 pm

    I’ve never heard of this except the below linked situation. Be careful with wording and legal technicalities though.

    Yeah, that’s why I said “revolutionary”. The idea that people can handle their own financial transactions is an old 1776 sort of idea, with a lot of history in this country that has vanished in modern times. The major thing is you’ve got the IRS wanting to track the transactions, then the banks wanting to control information about every last dime. And of course the role of the tracking money in busting criminal groups to justify it all.

    I think to go beyond it all you’ve got to look at the word “hawala” and look at the backbone ideas of trust, integrity, and so on. When a group of people sufficiently share these values, I think things like ownership become more important, and you can get a kind of liquidity that goes above and beyond money.

  4. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 12th, 2007 at 12:44 am

    I wish we could move beyond trying to create change by writing letters to the editor or standing on the street with signs or whatever other useless nonsense and focus and ideas like this, where we actually get to work building the world to be a better place…

    What do you mean by you “wish”? You can. Look, we’re doing it. Start digesting these ideas down into pamphlets. Photocopy them and hand them out.

    Be careful with wording and legal technicalities though.

    I want to reiterate that I (try to) love everybody and am 100% pro-everyone. Everyone should be able to prosper and all abundance should be mutually inspired and shared willingly.

    Looking at these hawala descriptions makes me wonder if this isn’t the *real* Al Qaeda which we are fighting: alternative systems of monetary organization which flout attempts at centralized banking. Is this what people are fighting and dieing for - to be able to live their life free of banks, needless fees and taxes?

  5. Tim Boucher Says:
    October 12th, 2007 at 2:37 am

    Jackpot!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system

    We are *so* plugged into the zeitgeist right now!

    Ripple is an open-source software project for developing and implementing a protocol for an open decentralized payment network. In its extreme form, the Ripple network could be a peer-to-peer distributed social network service with a monetary honor system based on trust that already exists between people in real-world social networks; this form is financial capital backed completely by social capital. On the other hand, it could be an extension of the existing hierarchical banking system, providing alternate payment routes that do not pass through a central bank.



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