I'm sorry for being so loopy and off-topic. LOL I'm afraid that's pretty ingrained. The Urstomtaler is one form of local currency, it's rather like the Eko. But so far as I know there's nothing like that in the USA right now. The best known American experiment with local currencies are Ithaca Hours ithacahours.org/ It's harder for Corporations to accept currencies like Ithaca Hours because they aren't easily converted to US dollars. Accepting them requires participating in a trading scheme. However with a scheme like Ithaca Hours the possible benefits of accepting them might include something more than reputation. For example a coffee house might pay performers in Ithaca Hours as a way to entice customers and also to cycle the Hours.

I suppose the reason that I brought up Aryty and Sente was because both schemes deal with the problem of the costs of money transactions across distances. My convoluted thinking was wondering whether local currencies could be a way of encouraging people from locations, say for example Magdeburg home of the Urstromtaler, but living elsewhere to spend their money in their home regions using local currencies. I was also extending this line of thought to Diaspora communities in the USA; and that's what intrigued me about Aryty.

You're right that Aryty is very much like a gift card. Here in the USA the rules about gift cards are evolving, partly in response to some unfair practices. Real estate companies who own shopping malls have set up gift cards which can be purchased at a central location but accepted by all of the retailers within their shopping mall properties. These financial instruments have had quite notorious contracts which have lead to legal crackdowns. The mall gift cards aren't really what we think of when thinking about local currencies, but they seem to me to have a resemblance. So in this example corporations saw the gift cards as a profit center; i.e.,increased sales + fees.

In American law going back to the Depression in the 1930's the government has been quite quick to make sure taxes can be collected on transactions whether or not actual money changes hands. Coupons, frequent flier miles, bater networks, are all given close scrutiny. That's why I've always been surprised that Ithaca Hours have managed to steer clear of intrusions, but also why the USA will be slow to have 15 local currencies as in Germany.

Time Dollars www.timebanks.org/ succeed here partly because the government doesn't view them as real money; that is, contracts surrounding Time Dollars are not enforcible in law.

Local currencies are not all the same. It seems that the ideas for alternative currencies are many and evolving. I look forward to corporations thinking that they have bottom line obligations to social good, and perhaps good local reputations are a step in that direction. As it stands, corporations are focused on the bottom line of profit. While good reputations may factor into that, my hunch is that corporations will be far more interested in alternative currencies as a way of separating people from their old-fashioned cash and adding to their bottom lines of profit; the Mall cards with the heavy fees and fine print, or the fancy footwork of airlines to make Air Miles worth less than promised as examples.

One reason that local communities might not want to encourage or allow places like Starbucks to use local currencies is places like that could damage the reputations of the local currencies.