TIMEREPUBLIK ® Timebank Aotearoa New Zealand. Hour Exchange Portland - Maine community service time bank. Timebanking UK. Directory of TimeBanks. 65 hours - time bank. Just Add Spice - Spice Time Credits. Create your Time Bank site. Elimination of all currencies, The New Social Security Home. TimeBanks USA. Time banking. Time banking is a pattern of reciprocal service exchange that uses units of time as currency.
It is an example of a complementary monetary system. A time bank, also known as a service exchange, is a community that practices time banking. The unit of currency, always valued at an hour's worth of any person's labor, used by these groups has various names, but is generally known as a time dollar in the USA and a time credit in the UK. Time banking is primarily used to provide incentives and rewards for work such as mentoring children, caring for the elderly, being neighborly—work usually done on a volunteer basis—which a pure market system devalues.
Origins and philosophy[edit] Time-based currency. In economics, a time-based currency is an alternative currency where the unit of exchange is the person-hour. Some time-based currencies value everyone’s contributions equally: one hour equals one service credit. In these systems, one person volunteers to work for an hour for another person; thus, they are credited with one hour, which they can redeem for an hour of service from another volunteer. Critics charge that this would lead to fewer doctors or dentists.