I once traveled through Blacksburg, VA where Virginia (Poly)Tech(ical Institute) is located and I noticed that the gas stations and such accepted the college student cards for payment.
At BYU we have a student card payment system, but it's hardly used on campus and I haven't seen it used off campus. I believe this is because the company that manages it charges too much. AJ ONeal On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Stanley Brinkerhoff <[email protected]>wrote: > VAGUIANS, > > There is an idea of a 'local' currency. Burlington has tried it. > Montpelier has tried it. > > I am sure its been done many times -- and it seems to fail (as far as I > have causally noticed). Has anyone developed; or has any area implemented; > a local "debit card" system for a town/geographical area? Something simple > where individuals could put cash onto cards (online, or even at a local > business) and spend locally with little to no processing fees? Right now a > local vendor subsodizes the creditcard at 1-5% -- such a system could > charge an equal overhead while guaranteeing local businesses they are > "paying" for local business, rather than sending 1-5% to a creditcard > processor. Such a system could even be piggybacked to process a vendors > normal creditcard transactions such that they could process local cards, and > as a failback, it would push the transaction out to their merchant. > > Enlighten me to where this has happened -- or why it wouldn't work. > > Stan >
