[Peace-discuss] LATimes: SF neighborhood breaks ground with "complementary currency" debit card

[Robert Naiman]

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-bernal-bucks1-20120206,0,6838671.story



Los Angeles TIMES/Feb. 6, 2012

Unified by the coin of their realm

Insular Bernal Heights — 'this weird little borderline utopia,' as one
resident calls it — has updated 'complementary currency' in the form
of a debit card.

By Lee Romney, Los Angeles Times

February 6, 2012

Reporting from San Francisco

Coiled around a wind-swept hill near this city's lively Mission
District, Bernal Heights takes an almost cult-like pride in being
insular.

With a butcher, grocer, bookstore and bakery, the neighborhood
provides the basics. When you add to that some unique establishments —
like an organic baby food outlet and a knife-sharpening venture
offering classes in Japanese whetstone techniques — many residents say
they rarely feel the urge to leave.

"It's this weird little borderline utopia," said Ken Shelf, 42, who
runs a combination movie-rental and succulent store here. His home,
business, favorite shops and kids' school are all within a five-block
radius.

Now, Bernal Heights is taking its experiment in localism one step
further, adopting what is believed to be the country's first
"complementary currency" in the form of a debit card.

Designed by two neighborhood loyalists versed in technology and
banking, the Bernal Bucks card allows residents to pay for their
purchases while earning credits every time they swipe it at any of the
two dozen area businesses that have signed on since June.

Accrued as frequent-flier miles are, the bucks can be printed as
coupons and used toward future purchases. Cardholders also can donate
their accrued "wealth" to neighborhood nonprofits.

"The convenience of being able to use it anywhere and having your
money increase in value because it's giving back to the community,
those are really important things for Bernal residents to plug into,"
said Rachel Ebora, executive director of the Bernal Heights
Neighborhood Center, which has started to pull in program-related
donations.

::

The idea of complementary currencies — which enhance but don't replace
an official mode of exchange — is not new.

Massachusetts' Berkshire region has Berkshares, colorful bills bought
with dollars at a slight discount. In California, Davis Dollars
(adorned with a bicycle) have circulated for a few years. And two
Marin County communities recently began minting $3 tokens at a
discount that are handed out as change. They can be spent at
participating merchants or pocketed as souvenirs.

Other currencies that encourage local trade or barter have sprung up
in Sweden, Japan, Kenya, Venezuela and Britain, among other countries.

The downside of most of the programs, advocates concede, is that
consumers have to carry two kinds of cash. And the most-engaged
merchants often get saddled with registers full of funny money.

So Bernal residents Guillaume Lebleu and Arno Hesse worked out an
electronic solution.

They met at an "unconference" on banking innovation in 2009. Both had
been pondering how communities could bolster their economic health in
the face of the national downturn. After hosting a forum to toss
around ideas, they began distributing $5 bills to merchants marked
with Bernal Bucks stickers.

Residents who reused the bills locally, in what Lebleu called
"probably the neighborhoodiest neighborhood in San Francisco," got a
token of appreciation: a crisp apple or an upgrade to a larger coffee.

The stickers raised awareness, Hesse said, but their potential was
limited. Fortunately for Bernal, he and Lebleu had the background to
take it to a higher level.

The soft-spoken Lebleu, 36, had developed financial software and long
pondered the ways technology was "changing money itself and, with it,
our communities and society."

The 50-year-old-Hess was a former Union Bank executive who had been
involved in the Slow Money movement, which urges resident investment
in the local food supply — with often unconventional returns. (His own
investment in a Vacaville organic farm earns him a steady supply of
eggs.)

Bernal Bucks is the pilot program of a company Hesse and Lebleu formed
last year to promote community rewards networks.

They are funding the effort out of their own pockets. Without going
into details, Hess said that he and Lebleu "expect to make a living —
not a killing — as the program gets adopted by more communities."

Branded with a cheerful image of Bernal's iconic hill, their Visa
debit card is issued by the local Community Trust Credit Union and
aims to make patronizing neighborhood stores simpler: Residents can
earn rewards or make charitable donations without having to keep track
of stickers on their bills or carry a passel of
buy-nine-and-get-the-10th-free punch cards.

Hess and Lebleu track the purchase patterns of Bernal Bucks
cardholders — who number in the hundreds — online and check in
face-to-face with merchants.

One recent day, they stopped in at Succulence, Shelf's video and
succulent store.

After movie rentals began to decline, Shelf tacked a plant business
onto the back of the shop two years ago. In addition to succulents,
the store sells ceramic and glass planters handcrafted by local
artists and offers classes on building terrariums and vertical
gardens.

An early backer of Bernal Bucks, Shelf said the "economic implosion of
2008" prompted him to spend more at local businesses and urge others
to do the same. "It's kind of cool," he said, "knowing that you're
keeping people's families going."

::

Josh Donald, owner of Bernal Cutlery, is another believer.

"I love the idea of a local currency," said Donald, who like others
here moved his accounts from a corporate bank to the credit union
while signing up for the card.

But Donald is still waiting for a customer to present him with a
Bernal Bucks coupon. That may be because shoppers are saving up their
credits.

Among them is Brigitte Phipps, a young mother who runs her husband's
chiropractic office. She has accrued $100 in Bernal Bucks — her 5%
return on $2,000 in purchases from the Good Life Grocery — but has yet
to decide where to spend them or whether to give them away.

"I think it's pretty awesome," she said. "I don't leave the hill."

As for the nonprofit donations, Hess and Lebleu said they are building
slowly.

Some cardholders give a fixed percentage of their bucks to the
elementary school's PTA, while others have chosen the Bernal Heights
Neighborhood Center, which offers programs for low-income youth and
seniors.

As six elderly women in black top hats tap-danced in the community
room recently, Ebora, the executive director, showed off her brand-new
Bernal Bucks card. (According to credit union manager Carlos Brenes,
20 or so users sign up every month.)

Last month, she said, the center accrued $50 in Bernal Bucks
donations. The amount may seem small, but Ebora said it would pay for
a month of hot lunches for one senior.

"Any little bit helps, especially with the decline in public funding," she
said.

The program taps into a growing desire to transact business on a more
intimate level.

"People are recognizing that dollars are basically scarce right now,"
said Janelle Orsi of Oakland's Sustainable Economies Law Center. But
even when you don't have the real dollars, she said, you still have
something of value.

Orsi said she often is approached by clients seeking to pay for legal
services in unconventional ways. In exchange for recent advice to a
food cooperative south of San Francisco, for example, Orsi was offered
lessons in "bird language."

"Money is so weird," she said. "It only has value if people are
willing to accept it."

lee.romney at latimes.com

Copyright © 2012, Los Angeles Times


-- 
Robert Naiman
Policy Director
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org
naiman at justforeignpolicy.org
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