Co-here Locality Tokens bridge merchant payments & loyalty rewards, locally circulating currency, regional currency, national currency and globally roaming currency.
Open source code, decentralised node & liquidity network – community driven.
The project is in conceptual design phase, preparing for the digital wallet, payment, transferable loyalty reward & locally circulating currency tsunami.
Second stage includes Point of Sale loans sourced from peer networks to three degrees of trusted connections and common loan pool, and a facility for prepaid discount subscriptions for merchants to offer customers.
Stage three will provide merchants the ability to escrow Local Tokens and brand their own Locality tokens, while customers prepaying in bulk for subscriptions, receive merchant branded tokens & discounts as rewards.
A short story
A person walks in to a cafe to meet a friend, enjoy a delicious healthy breakfast in a comfortable environment and friendly service. They approach the payment counter and pay, receiving a stamp on a loyalty rewards card.
Teasing open the payment, just a little
We may notice the customer and the merchant pay fees to their banks, even if the payment was in cash. If the payment was via debit or credit card, the merchant also pays a fee for Electronic Funds Transfer Point of Sale (EFTPOS) equipment and a fee to a payment gateway service. The merchant may ask the customer to contribute a transaction fee to reduce their costs. The loyalty rewards card may have been made of paper, printed locally and physically stamped with a stamper. Do you have a few of these stuffed in your wallet? There may have been an electronic rewards program via a mobile app. There may have been a credit card payment with fees and interest.
What if… a shared loyalty rewards platform was so much more?
What if… a loyalty rewards program could provide all these services at a lower cost (and more ethically): banking, eftpos, payment gateway service, as well as a shared loyalty rewards platform?
What if… you could transfer rewards between participating merchants, convert them or cash out?
What if.. in stage two, we mutually funded a Point of Sale Loan with scheduled repayments and merchants could provide discounted subscription facility?
What if… in stage three, we platform shared models and tools for cooperation between customers, employees, impact investors and entrepreneurs, to fund enterprises and manage their equity and governance – a platform in common?
Open shared protocols, an emerging financial paradigm
While Co-here’s story is just starting, it’s building on top of a history of open communication protocols, such as the internet and world wide web. It’s building on a growing movement of open source software development powering much of the web. It’s building on a movement of distributed ledger technology as infrastructure and decentralised finance (DeFi) as an economic paradigm.
The “open and in common” paradigm has been growing and developing for decades. It’s all about connecting people with communication and financial infrastructure, which they share in common, benefit from and contribute towards.
Democratising economics with currency as a service
Co-here Local Tokens are a complementary currency for payments at participating merchants, serving a village, or a city / region, serving nationally or international. An automated localisation incentive – rewards bringing currency back in to local circulation – the more local, the more the rewards.
Complementary currencies work in addition to existing money, rather than replacing existing, official money. There are whole different families of complementary currencies. One of them is local currencies. One is regional currencies. Another is functional currencies. Another is social-purpose currencies.
Bernard Lietaer
Co-here in a nutshell
Localisation reduces the out-flow of economic value, repairing the ‘leaky bucket’, increasing the re-circulation of money through preference for local trade, mutual finance and investment. Boosting re-circulation even a small amount can have a virtuous ‘local multiplier effect’.
Co-here is about cohesive resilience in communities supported by an economic localisation incentive, complementary currency, peer lending & prepaid subscriptions.
Co-here Local Tokens provide a way of payment in which the receiver will be incentivised to continue to spend it locally as well.
Local Tokens can be spent in other localities, regionally, nationally and even globally, but with a disincentive fee to take currency to an outer locality and an incentive bonus to bring currency back in to circulation in an inner locality.
Local traders provide loyalty rewards and discount subscriptions to customers and re-circulate the currency. The third phase of Co-here roadmap is to facilitate community investment in co-operatives and social enterprises.
Read more about Why Co-here Local Tokens?
Co-here nuts and bolts
Local Tokens
Global stable value redeemable transactional payment token.
Multi collateral crypto basket: 80% stable assets, 20% liquid & staked.
Collateral conversions with demand pricing as a stability mechanism
Fair-for-all
Continuous Supply to Demand Issuance
(100% ICO Free)
Anti-speculative
Automated liquidity for conversions with demand price stabilisation
Localisation Incentive
A bonus of 2.41% is awarded when transferring Local Tokens to a more inner locality. Receive rewards when transferring Local Tokens from the global compartment of your digital wallet to a national wallet compartment, then another bonus transferring to a city / region, and to a village and to a village merchant (credit account). The localisation bonus acts as a shared & connecting loyalty reward scheme – with up to 10% bonus.
Disincentive fee of 5% when transferring Local Tokens out of an inner locality from a village merchant to a village, to a city, to nation, to your global wallet.
Note: 1) In order to take advantage of the localisation incentive you would need to spend more than half of your localised Local Tokens in the locality.
2) Merchants are able to de-localise Local Tokens with a reduced disincentive fee (as low as 2.5%).
Peer to Peer Lending
Borrow from your peer network when purchasing from a reputable participating Local Token merchant. Build up your credit limit over time through your borrowing reputation.
Repay your peer network 10% weekly, over 10 weeks or earlier.
6% APR interest, on outstanding amounts to grow a common lending pool.
Interest free loans while your loan account deposit balance is increasing.
A social sharing economy for cyclical borrowing & repayments.
Mutual finance for Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) read more…
Peer to Merchant Lending
A prepaid customer subscription standard could provide advance funds to participating merchants at a lower cost than institutional loans and allow these merchants to offer greater discounts to their loyal customers – read more…
In this prepaid subscription schedule there is a gradual increase in the discount rate each week, which amounts to savings for the customer, with an understood agreed discount rate over the full term. The advantage of this prepaid subscription model is the facility to be paused, or terminated with a refund, for the remaining prepaid allowance.
Platform Co-op
Member owned – peer enterprise – stakeholder models.
Seed funding for localised member co-operative startups.
Shared development, tools and resources for operations.
Convert private business ownership to member owned.
Member stake tracking, reward and liquidity fund.
Employee wage option to increase stake investment.
Customer loyalty rewards as credits & stake options.
See tenancyOS future-credits
e:co housing + energy + ride + work + eat
Read more about Why Co-here Local Tokens?