Bristol businesses queuing up to join local currency scheme

The Bristol pound - usable only with member businesses in the city in southwest England - is to launch in September, and organisers are deluged with local firms wanting to sign up.

"The perception of banking and money is that it's a very ruthless system: people are out for what they can get," co-founder Ciaran Mundy told AFP.

"This is about saying yes to something new. It's tapping into a different set of values about money."

The scheme has "captured people's imaginations", he added, in a recession-hit year when British banks have been beset by scandals and ministers talked openly of a possible euro collapse.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/currency/9478973/Bristol-businesses-queuing-up-to-join-local-currency-scheme.html