MJ Ray wrote:
mmlacak <mmlacak@gmail.com> 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.
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