This is Not your Typical Credit Card!

The Global Trade Card is a Revolutionary Payment System that Leverages our Non-cash Monetary Redemption Platform to Facilitate Commerce.

Features and Benefits

• With the Global Trade Card, you never pay your monthly credit card bill with cash. You pay for your purchases with your own product or service!

• The Global Trade Card can be used to process transactions for community currencies in the United States and Europe.

• The Global Trade Card's TradeID has far reaching benefits to poverty stricken communities throughout the world that lack currency to facilitate commerce.

• Transactions can be processed at 29 million existing merchant termianls and POS systems worldwide.

The Global Trade Card Breaks Down the Barriers to Trade and Commerce by leveraging alternative currency platforms for purchasing.

Continue reading to learn about our company, our expertise, why the world needs this, what you can get for helping, and the impact it could have on world commerce. You can also learn about the $65 billion barter industry and complimentary currencies, so read on...

Company & Personal Background

VirtualBarter has been the premier provider of SaaS technology, apps and payment platforms to the $65 bilion commerical barter industry for over 13 years. Our team includes business professionals with extensive technology, marketing and barter domain expertise.

I have personally been involved in developing online information services for the RBOC's information gateway services, and have been involved in all facets of the barter industry for over 23 years, including retail barter, corporate trade, and I am the designer of the software platform that powers numerous barter exchanges worldwide. Our technology team includes software architects and developers formerly with Oracle and Lucent.

In the past few months, we have launched numerous online barter exchanges for associations, chambers of commerce, business networks, barter companies, and their members and clients through a seamlessly integrated network of branded online barter services, which have the potential to transform companies, trade exchanges, and the commercial barter industry into a unified economy of global cashless trade.

Why The World Needs This

The commercial barter industry has grown substantially in the past 30 years, but still realizes less than a 7% market penetration. Therefore the opportunities before us are staggering.

One of the major obstacles to barter becoming ubiquitos throughout the world and gaining massive market penetration is the barrier created by having a multitude of non-interchangeable currencies between barter exchanges.

The issue was partially solved many years ago when IRTA created UC, a common currency, so that exchanges could trade with each other utilizing a universal currency within a network of exchanges, just like members of exchanges utilize in a local barter exchange to trade with each other.

But, what the barter industry truly needs, is a common payment platform that parallels the credit card and electronic payments industry that incorporates currency conversions, similar to how SWIFT functions for the banking industry, to facilitate seamless global trade.

The VirtualBarter trading platform is currently positioned to provide 400,000 trade exchange business members in hundreds of barter exchanges access to a Global Trade Marketplace to promote the sale of inventories, products and services available from members of other exchanges.

The Global Trade Card, implementing exclusive proprietary patent pending redemption technology, will empower not only barter exchange members, but service providers and members of community currencies, to trade seamlessly at the point of purchase using the TradeID linked to their card, to pay for products or services, even if they are members of different exchanges.

While similar to a MasterCard that can be used to pay for purchases at 24+ million merchant establishments, business owners will want a Global Trade Card because when they receive their monthly Debit Card statement, they will be able to pay for their purchases with their own product or service instead of cash.

In addition, the Global Trade Card will foster new sales from new customers to participating merchants that accept the Global Trade Card, who ordinarily would not have done business with the merchant.

What We Need & What You Get

Pursuant to recent collaboration that put VirtualBarter in a unique position within the industry, by empowering VirtualBarter with the ability to provide technology platforms and apps that no one else can match, we are about to embark on a much higher, advanced level of services and scale that requires ramping up software enhancement development to incorporate POS transaction processing, reward and loyalty programs.

We intend to raise $35,000 for development capital to help reach our immediate goals without delay.

The funding will be used to develop a Global Trade Card platform so that any member of any participating barter exchange throughout the world will be enabled to purchase products or services from participating merchant members using their Global Trade Card for payment.

Your contribution will help fast track the development of the Global Trade Card so that we can introduce it to over 100 barter exchanges worldwide at the upcoming International Barter Convention in Las Vegas in September.

Your contribution will also help make the Global Trade Card and its underlying processing capability utilizing Trade ID's, available to community currency organizations throughout the world.

So let me break it down for you and tell you about the Perks...

Contribute $25 or $50 and be one of the early adopters to get your very own Global Trade Card embossed with your business name.

For $100, get a membership at a participating barter exchange in lieu of paying an account set-up fees and the first 12 month's monthly fees.

As a member of Universal Currnecy, VirtualBarter is going to pay for your selection of a product or service from the UC Marketplace. For $250 or $500, you get to select your perk from a brilliant array of products, services, travel or media being offered by over 100 barter exchanges on the irta.com UC Marketplace website.

$750 gets you an annual subscription to www.high5review.com, where you can influence customers to write reviews, distribute them onto social networks, improve your search engine rankings, as well as give customers loyalty rewards that keep them returning to your business.

Want to learn more about the barter business and network with industry professionals? The IRTA International Convention is the place to be. Your $1500 contribution gets you an all inclusive convention package including admission, resort accomodations and meals, as VirtualBarter will pay for you to attend the convention.

Now that you're all excited about starting your own barter business, a $2500 or $7500 contribution gets you just what you need to start your own business including start-up advice, mentoring, and the technology you need to run a successful exchange.

No matter what business you're in, you need to advertise. A $5000 contribution gets you $15,000 in 30 second radio spots on your selection from over 250 radio stations throughout the US. Select by region, state, or station format to get the ultimate exposure for your business.

And, we just added a new Perk... Get a $4000+ all inclusive vacation for two for 7 days with a $2500 donation!

The Impact

• We are developing a non-cash common currency payment processing platform that will break down the barriers to global trade and foster the disruption of cash payments.

• Busines owners and people that can provide a service can use the Global Trade Card to pay for purchases at the point of sale.

• Communities can utilize Global Trade Cards to facilitate commerce within their community.

• Communities lacking currency can utilize the Global Trade Card or Trade ID's to process and track transactions between residents and shops.

About Complimentary Currencies

Complementary currencies are endorsed by many governments worldwide. The oldest and largest is the WIR system in Switzerland, an exchange system among 60,000 businesses – a full 20 percent of all Swiss businesses. This currency has been demonstrated to have a counter-cyclical effect, helping to stabilize the Swiss economy by providing additional liquidity and lending capacity when conventional credit for small businesses is scarce.

Brazil is a global leader in using the complementary currency approach for poverty alleviation. Interestingly, its experience began in much the same way as Kenya’s: Brazil’s most successful community currency, called “Palmas”, was nearly strangled at birth by the Brazilian Central Bank. How it went from criminal suspect to official state policy is told by Margrit Kennedy and co-authors in People Money:

Emma Onyango sells tomatoes, kale and water to support eight children. She used Bangla-Pesa complimentary currency to buy sugar, flour and potatoes.

Complimentary Currencies can Help Erradicate Poverty

In an African slum with little of the national currency available, supplying residents with an alternative currency has a positive effect that is obvious, immediate and incontrovertible.

This was demonstrated when Will Ruddick, an American physicist, economist and former Peace Corps volunteer, introduced a complementary currency into a Kenyan slum called Bangladesh, near the coastal city of Mombasa. Will’s local development organization, Koru-Kenya, worked with over one hundred small business owners in Bangladesh, who agreed to give each other the equivalent of 400 shillings (about €3.5 or $4.60) in mutual credit in the form of business vouchers called Bangla-Pesa.

Half of the vouchers would be available for spending on each others’ products and services, and half would be spent into the community on public projects such as waste collection and health services. Allocation decisions were democratic and transparent, and the new currency was backed entirely by the community’s own resources and insured by a system of group guarantors, not by the Kenyan government or a development agency.

The project was launched on May 11, 2013. The immediate effect was an increase in sales of 22%. That meant increasing incomes and purchasing power by 22%. These exchanges were of goods and services that without the additional currency would have been thrown away or gone to waste, not because they were unmarketable but because potential customers did not have the money to buy them. Introducing Bangla-Pesa worked to move the economy forward at full capacity, connecting the community to its own resources when the only things lacking were those slips of paper called “money.” 

The successful Kenyan experiment quickly earned endorsements from the United Nations, The Hague and the International Reciprocal Trade Association. Indeed, no other poverty alleviation or local governance program can compete with the cost-effectiveness of this approach, which is easily replicable in poor communities across Africa. The plan was to expand it to other villages in a democratic grassroots fashion so that it could provide a local medium of exchange for people throughout the continent. 

You can also donate to the Bangla-Pesa project here. 

About The Barter Industry

Ancient Barter was man’s first form of commerce and consisted of the one to one direct exchange of goods and services. Advances in technology have greatly expanded and enhanced the scope of Barter far beyond this limited one to one model.

Last year IRTA Member Companies using the “Modern Trade and Barter” process, made it possible for over 400,000 companies World Wide to utilize their Excess Business Capacities and underperforming assets, to earn an estimated $12 Billion dollars in previously lost and wasted revenues.

In terms of income, Excess Business Capacity represents the difference between actual cash revenues received, and the cash revenues and profits that would be realized, if a business operated at 100% of its capacity. Most businesses are operating at less than 100% of their potential business capacity.

Barter Exchanges can help a business realize lost revenues and make additional profits by making use of its Excess Business Capacity and Underperforming Assets. Consult the worldwide Membership Directory listing on the www.irta.com web site, for a barter exchange located in your geographical area.

Businesses that choose to participate in Modern trade and Barter will become a client of a barter exchange. As clients, when they sell their products and services to other clients in the system they earn trade credits which are deposited into their accounts. They then have the ability to purchase products and services from other member clients utilizing trade credit in their accounts. Barter Exchanges play a vital role as they provide organization, system management, record keeping, maintenance of transaction record and broker services to each member client.

Why Business Barter

The Department of Commerce says that barter in its various forms accounts for about thirty percent of the world's total business. The International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA) recently announced that U.S. barter transacted through commercial barter brokers now exceeds $12 billion annually. Over 400,000 U.S. businesses actively use organized barter.

There are many good reasons why more and more businesses worldwide are bartering their products and services, but underlying them all is one fundamental business motivation; businesses profit.

Airlines and restaurants can fill empty seats, hotels and resorts can fill empty rooms, printers can fill press downtime, professionals can fill empty time slots, health care professionals can treat new patients. Business owners and professionals can then take this new found revenue and reduce cash expenses or expand their operations. 

Businesses across America are taking a serious look at barter as a way to build their bottom line, and the rapid growth of the online barter industry can only mean that businesses likes what today's barter industry has to offer.

You Can Make a Difference

The Global Trade Card will have a huge imact on global commerce as well as help small to midsize businesses by increasing their sales and reducing their cash requirements for purchasing.

Community currencies will also be able to leverage the Global Trade Card technology to record and track transactions for trading products and services within a community.

Other Ways You Can Help

We would love for you to be a contributor and become a sponsor of the new Global Trade economy, but if you can't contribute, that doesn’t mean you can’t help.

Please help us get the word out and make some noise about our campaign so that we can reach our goal. You can share our campaign in your social network or by using the Indiegogo share tools.