Re: Proposal: SPI as international money transfer service

[mmlacak]

MJ Ray wrote: mmlacak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...] What we do need, beside a good will, is a convenient, reliable, affordable international money transfer service. [...] They all aren't up to a general community benefit in long term. Mutual banking services exist in England, variously called things like cooperatives, credit unions and building societies. They exist for the benefit of their members (not the general community, but near enough for me) and some provide international money transfer more cheaply than you describe, charging only for their own operational expenses and are as traceable as the systems used allow. If such institutions or services do not exist in your country, then I suggest trying to create them. The ICA www.ica.coop may help. I don't think turning SPI into one is a good idea, as it doesn't necessarily involve free software, but I'd support SPI using one instead of its current banking providers, based on what I've seen of them. Hope that helps, Now, that's constructive replay ;-) Banking services in Croatia, almost without exception, revolves at credit options. ( Trivia for you: which nation has the most BMWs per capita in the world? Croatian. Now you know how. ) Nobody is really interested in cooperation. Establishing institution or service from ground up would require significant capital at a begining. Not only that, you'd have to have a political support, and appropriate background to succeed. Both of which I, obviously enough, don't have. I stumbled upon MoneyBookers ( http://www.moneybookers.com/app/ ), it seems like a service we're looking for. Wikipedia uses it, and I suppose they made an informed pick, so it should be good enough for us.