Approach

Our mission

To provide small- and medium-sized businesses with immediate benefits while creating positive feedback loops towards healthier local economies, using collaborative finance.

To that end, we design and develop new organisational models, working with our partners on the ground.

The methods underlying these models are not new, but tried and tested. Some exist in different contexts. Others are inspired by the past.

Core benefits of our models

Helping small businesses thrive

  • Clearing debts in a network, using new technology, businesses can improve their cash flow.
  • Using future-use vouchers to fund projects prevents bank debt.


Working towards a healthier local economy

  • Network clearing avoids payment gridlocks and improves business relationships.
  • Agreements based on mutual benefit help to build quality local infrastructure.


Re-localising finance

  • Collaborative finance means less dependence on a flawed global system.
  • Providing finance locally creates a virtuous circle of increased local capacity.


Note: As trust in a network increases, further improvements are possible by adding tools like liquidity injection and mutual credit.

What we do might seem unusual. But MCS is part of a growing movement of people who know we can’t achieve continued prosperity with our current economic and financial systems — even if policy-makers, business leaders or bankers want to change them from within.

We have the opportunity to create better structures by designing and refining new organisational models from the ground up, starting with the ‘adjacent possible’.

The financial approaches we use have proven effective in a variety of contexts. The novelty lies in bringing them more directly into the service of producers of value, providing them with significant benefits in terms of cash efficiency and risk reduction.


If you want to dive deeper into our work, we have created some pages that form the start of a pattern language, inspired by Christopher Alexander’s work. You will find them under the articles section, and under models — these are so central that they got their own menu point.


Further information is available on our old MCS website. We will gradually transfer content from there to this site and update it in the process.

We recommend these pages in particular:

Co-design - How we make sure that our projects become part of the local economy and work with what is already there
https://www.mutualcredit.services/co-design

Why collaborative finance needs to move from complementary to mainstream
https://www.mutualcredit.services/blog/complementary-economics-won-t-do-it