Stories of Local Currencies

Launched in 2012, the Bristol Pound experienced great success at its start, making it the leading local currency of England within a few years. Its goals? Encouraging people to spend their money at local and independent businesses, and encouraging businesses to localize their supply chain.

Just three years after the Bristol Pound launched, more than 800 businesses were accepting the currency and over 1500 Bristol residents were using it. In 2019 one million Bristol Pounds were transacted, mainly through online payment (90% of transactions). The currency was also strongly supported by Bristol City Council, that allowed citizens and businesses to pay their taxes in the local currency. In order to show his political support, the former Mayor of Bristol - George Ferguson - received his entire salary in Bristol Pounds, and part of the salary of city-council employees was also given in the local currency when wished. From June 2015, energy bills were able to be paid in Bristol Pounds to the renewable energy provider "Good Energy".
 
However, despite promising tendencies of usage, its success began to decline in 2017. Surprisingly, businesses started to unregister. When Diana Finch joined the Bristol Pound Community Interest Company as managing director with the aim of saving it, she understood that tackling the problem at its roots would be quite challenging.

The main issue was a branding problem. From its start, the Bristol Pound was branded as "alternative". As a result, only people who already had an ecological conscience and that had the time and resources to shop in line with that conscience were seduced by the initiative. This fact led to two major issues. First, the individual membership stopped growing significantly after that initial cohort of people had been recruited, and second, the Bristol Pound did not succeed to fulfill one of its promises: that of bringing new customers to partners' shops, as the individual members were largely already their customers. Thus the market of the currency was restrained and after the initial impressive growth, it reached a plateau before declining.

This was not in line with the desire of the Bristol Pound initiative, which wanted the currency to belong to all citizens, and not just an engaged minority. In response, the initiative tried to rebrand in 2019, focusing on providing marketing and networking services for the business members, in response to research looking at what small businesses really needed to thrive. Beyond the branding, there were other issues, such as an understandable reluctance on the part of businesses joining the scheme to risk changing their trusted supply chains, which in turn limited recirculation of the currency. Meanwhile, trying to create a viable future for the currency from transaction charges, given that the scaling up of usage didn’t happen, proved impossible. 

Given this analysis of the problems, the decision was taken in 2020 to gradually draw the Bristol Pound scheme to a close. But there was a recognition that there was still much to be done to create a greener, fairer and more resilient local economy. And so the Bristol Pound team started to develop ideas for a new concept, Bristol Pay, that is set to be launched in 2022.