Better Business / Member profile
Bristol Pound
The Bristol Pound is delighted to be a founding member Better Business.
The Bristol Pound (£B) is Bristol’s local currency. First launched in 2012, it is the largest local currency in the UK, and the only one which can be used to pay council tax and business rates.
It comes in both paper and electronic forms, including a phone app which has a map of businesses accepting £B and provides a convenient way to pay.
The Bristol Pound might sound like it’s all about money, but actually it is more about creating a resilient and sustainable independent business sector in Bristol, and in turn, enabling a fairer and more inclusive local economy.
Put another way, It is about building relationships both between independent businesses, and between local businesses and the communities they serve. In other words, the Bristol Pound is very much aligned to Better Business. It just achieves its goals by using currency as a tool to foster economic links between its members.
You might wonder why a currency is a good way of achieving Bristol Pound’s aims. Through the currency, money spent in £B is tied to Bristol, instead of leaking away to distant head offices and shareholders, because those £Bs will be re-spent with other local business members.
The Bristol Pound is entering into a new phase of development, with plans to reach across all parts of the city and grow transactions in the currency by a factor of ten within the next five years. To achieve that, they are recruiting Community Champions as ambassadors for the currency in their local neighbourhood, and signing up Business Champions as leading lights in the business community, explaining how the Bristol Pound can be fully integrated into every local business.
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