Your Great Exchange
Is our barter network that supports your abundance and right livelihood by offering what you make or what you do to others and thereby generating credits you can use to acquire the items and services that you need. The Brilliance Platform empowers both your abundance and your choice to exchange with others who are a pleasure to support and to be supported by. The generosity and kindness of a gift economy are combined with the practicality of alternative forms of stored value.
How it works
Have you ever gone to a farmer’s market that uses barter? I bring my apples and you bring your honey and now we both get to enjoy the fruits and the honeybees’ magic. Now all we need is for the baker to participate and come back later with those delicious pies!
Creating a barter exchange using barter currency - so everyone can get what they need and want and can offer what they are happy to provide - presented a bit of a challenge: who goes first? If I’m the first one to provide something for barter dollars in the Your Great ExchangeTM network, how can anyone pay me since no one has earned barter dollars yet? Here’s how we solved that challenge…
Secured barter dollars
One option we offer as a solution is for people to secure their barter account with actual currency. Perhaps you’re familiar with secured credit cards. Where someone doesn’t have the credit history to get a regular credit card, they can provide an amount of money that the credit card company holds for them. Then they can charge up to that amount on their card.
Similarly, say you’re starting out with Your Great ExchangeTM and therefore have no barter dollars in your account. You want to take advantage of someone’s offering that costs $100 barter dollars. To do that, you provide the $100 dollars in currency that the network holds as security. The provider of the good or service gets $100 barter dollars and you have minus $100 barter dollars in your account. Your negative barter dollar account is secured by an equal or greater amount of money that you have put in as security.
When you provide your offering to the network, you generate barter dollars that go into your barter dollars account. That way, you can eliminate the negative balance and generate a positive balance in that account.
You can get your cash security dollars back anytime you want as long as your barter dollar account is not in a negative balance that the secured dollars are needed for offset.
Barter dollar credit
Another way you can receive a good or service on the Your Great ExchangeTM network is where the provider is willing to give you credit. They can check your profile and also see your barter dollar credit history on the network. If they’re comfortable giving you credit, they generate barter dollars receivable and you create barter dollars payable.
There are three barter dollar accounts that each person can have: a) a regular barter dollar account, which may have a positive or negative balance as described under “Secured barter dollars”; b) a barter dollar receivable account; and c) a barter dollar payable account.
Your barter dollar payable account operates on a first-in, first-out basis. When you generate barter dollars by providing something to someone else, whoever provided you barter dollar credit first gets their barter dollars for that transaction. At that point the credit they offered you gets paid off and so their barter dollar receivable account gets reduced as does your barter dollar payable account. You paid off that credit by generating barter dollars to make that happen.
Other regular currency involvement
The provider of a good or service in the exchange network needs to pay a small cash fee upon receiving the barter dollars. That cash amount is revenue to the Your Great ExchangeTM system to cover operating costs and to create additional resources in return for providing the system. That fee is set to 5% and is subject to change in future if conditions make it advisable.
All regular currency transactions also add on whatever the banking system charges depending on the form of payment, such as credit card or regular bank account direct withdrawal.
The provider of a good or service in the exchange network has the flexibility to require a percentage of the price for the good or service to be paid in regular currency. That percentage can be anywhere from 0% to 25% for a service provided and up to 50% for a good provided. This flexibility allows the provider to cover costs. Examples of costs may be art supplies for an art class as a service or the cost of wood for custom furniture as a physical good.
One-on-One Exchanges
Direct one-on-one exchanges between two people are permitted without the need for barter dollars. The two parties decide between themselves what they are offering each other in trade. No transaction fees apply.
Programs and Offerings
Any service that fits into the categories that may be offered in the Programs and Offerings section of the Brilliance PlatformTM can also be offered in the Your Great ExchangeTM barter network. The system requires that any such service offered in the barter network must also be offered in the Programs and Offerings section so that people can use their Paying Member fees as well as any barter dollars they may wish to apply in a barter network transaction.
