Barter: a technology strategy for local wealth generation

A mobile system called Barter has been designed for mobile social networking supporting local ethical trading. The Barter system is underpinned by a simple concept: if we can record the money coming in to businesses from the local community, user can reveal information about the money flow within a community. User can then design a new window into the flow's effects to motivate businesses to spend a higher proportion of this income in the local economy. Barter's current iteration captures transaction data. It uses Google's Android platform and NFC cards to record transaction information as a separate process. Designers have adopted barcode scanning and manual input to attract more trader participants. The Barter system encourages businesses to take the money that comes into their business from the local community and then spend it in the community. Barter will demonstrate the long-term impacts of spending behavior using visualizations to show the flow of money away from the local economy, and providing feedback on the wealth generated by local trade.