Intended to promote the local economy and local employment, these currencies (parity with the euro and devoid of cents) can only be used for everyday purchases, in a restricted area and in a network of shops, businesses and services committed to respecting social and ecological criteria. The Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) law of 2014 had given a legal basis to complementary local currencies.
Combined with mobile applications, digital local currencies would be more easily traceable, allowing for more accurate tracking and measuring its impact.
Of the 83 local currency projects that exist in France, only a little over a dozen circulate a digital currency in addition to a paper currency.
For local currency promoters, the transition to digital technology represents a test "forcing the collectives behind the projects to reexamine themselves and to change the desired compromise between capacity, control and ambition," observe five researchers from the GIS Marsouin, François Coldefy, Karine Roudaut, Valérie Deruelle, Nicolas Jullien and Jorge Muñoz, in their study of local currencies in Brittany.survey they dedicate to local currencies in Brittany.
"Informing, distributing and convincing users of the currency takes time, as does organizing exchanges and conversions, in a context where volunteer resources are limited. The digitization, total or partial, of exchanges, because it reduces these "transaction costs" appears to be an almost "obvious" solution.Nine complementary local currencies (MLCC) in Brittany, out of the 12 existing ones, have announced their decision to converge towards a common regional digital currency by 2021. The objective is to pool efforts and costs of digitization, to allow exchanges with the same currency between several areas of life (especially for professionals) and to extend the use to territories not yet covered by associations.
The five researchers of the GIS Marsouin retrace the debates that cross the promoters of local currencies in Brittany, about this project of digital and regional currency.
"The arguments are threefold: internal, on the management of exchange operations, and external, on the diffusion of the local currency (the number of users), and on its speed of circulation (the number of transactions per unit of local currency in circulation). Digital technology would make it possible to "reach a younger audience" while providing an alternative to bank cards, thus avoiding the potential uses of digital tracking of purchasing habits. It would also "simplify and facilitate the circulation between professionals" via the online account and the mobile application. ..."Despite all these advantages, and the initial enthusiasm, the experimentation raises as many problems as it solves. ... The digital currency implies new commitments for volunteers.Digital technology re-interrogates projects and their bearers on three dimensions:
- "Which actors (especially institutional ones) should be involved?
- How can they be involved and what risk does this entail for the autonomy of the project?
- Between the economic reality of exchanges and the definition of a place to live, what is the relevant territory?
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