Bitte antworten Sie auch in Deutsch… even if my post is in English.
In another discussion, a community member talked about their local bio-laden not wanting to take those „Boese Kreditkarten“. I know, those yukky credit card things…
In this community, you guys cycle to work, eat vegetarian, shop local and do all those things we should. You don’t fly so often, and bank with a bank that has a strong sustainability policy. Still you need to use a „Visa“ card, and behind the scenes, typically American corporations, and institutional shareholders benefit from you buying that bag of organic carrots.
I’m going to ignore „cross border“ for a moment, although the Euro and SEPA does mean that 18 countries are technically in the same virtual country from a payments perspective.
How can we easily transact with each other - exchange money - in a way that is simple, secure and „bio“. Let’s ignore the technology for a moment (even if that’s my favourite part).
Let’s talk about how we might get small shops and market traders accepting a form of digital payment, and as many members of the local community making such payments? (I’ll introduce one buzz work, P2P - person 2 person).
In other countries, there are various local P2P schemes - Swish in Sweden, Viips in Norway, and in Asia, you have WeChat-Pay and others. Venmo in the US. mPesa in Southern Africa across a number of countries.
Some key features might be…
- Tied to bank accounts directly - enable P2P
- Owned, managed inside Germany - make GDPR easier
- Very low cost - to „send“ (free) or „receive“ (<5c per transaction)
- Real-time - get paid now
- Sustainable ethic - CO2 offsets, zero carbon to transact
- Secure/reliable - all the good stuff
- Super easy UX - this is so very important, secure yet easy to use
There’s a bundle of legal, regulatory and compliance issues around such an initiative, yet it might be a thing.
What do you think?
