Time Bank

Definition of Barter

1. DEFINITION of BARTER, to exchange goods and services for other goods and services without using money to complete the transaction. To access a barter, two parties must accept a contract called a swap. The barter appeared about 10 millennia ago, during the Neolithic, along with the first incursions of the human being in agriculture and livestock. Thanks to having left behind the hunting, typical of the Paleolithic, to become a productive species, man began to enjoy a surplus in their food, a percentage that was not necessary to consume immediately.
2. The surplus allowed people to devote their time to the creation of various products, such as ornaments and ceramic bowls, which could be exchanged with farmers and ranchers. Something that from the current perspective seems so simple and so natural, changed the lives of our ancestors, giving rise to private property and wealth, which was directly proportional to the amount of production in excess.
   The concept of division of labor also began to develop, for which an organization was needed to ensure the production of surpluses on a constant basis, so that all workers did not have to dedicate themselves to the same tasks.

Among its advantages, it can be said that barter allows:

1. buy goods and services without using money;
2. maintain the monetary capital of a company;
3. Maximize the finances of a business;
4. increase productivity;
5. obtain more commercial relationships with companies from other sectors;
6. Find commercial channels without changing the client portfolio.

On the other hand, barter has the following disadvantages:

1. It is not always easy, or possible, to find someone who wants the product or service we offer for the exchange;
2. the ambiguity with respect to the monetary value of the goods or services exchanged makes the decision difficult, even though the parties are based on the market price;
3. Does not admit the participation of an intermediary, unless he is willing to work without receiving anything in return. This means that contact must be made directly between the two parties;
4. It is very likely that the exchange will greatly favor one of the two parties at a monetary level, given that barter is carried out because of a need, often of an urgent nature.
5. Nowadays, and for some time now, barter has been a very common resource during economic crises, especially when hyperinflation occurs, given that the currency loses its value considerably. Through the Internet it is possible to find various sites that offer their users tools to exchange goods and services; one of the best-known examples internationally is the Time Bank

Time Bank

The MySPURT-Time Bank is a system that facilitates the exchange of services by time. According to its creators, the unit of money used is the time, regardless of the service offered or received, since for the Time Bank all the skills are worth the same.
The services provided are many and diverse: care for the elderly, company for medical consultations, language courses or computer, various repairs, help to decorate the house or to install appliances, cooking classes, physical training, transport for travel of varied distances, translations, digitization of text documents, ETC, ETC., And the list goes on. Apart from the obvious benefits of the exchange of services, the Time Bank fosters relations between unknown persons for productive purposes, demystifying the innumerable fears of the city with respect to strangers and enriching its users culturally and emotionally. Each hour made for volunteering work will be paid for in SPURT. Each country might have a different rate.