Digital Identity Bank

Changing The Constitution One Transaction at a Time

We live in a representative democratic society that evolved from the rise of constitutional republics like France and America in the late 18^th Century.  This resulted in the emergence of modern constitutions governing the legal behaviour of political leaders, supported by accounting frameworks for citizenship. Governments now manage taxation, legal process and border controls by issuing identity documentation, but as we spend more time online our real world identity overlaps our emerging digital identity and vice versa leading to governments becoming “digital by default” as citizen identity documentation is transformed into data. This process is useful for navigating the digital realm but it lacks democratic accountability, creating a shift in representation from government to private enterprise where information is easily shared without consent, enabling misrepresentation and fraud.

In response to these challenges the UK government attempted the digitisation of state processes with a National Identity Register, holding fifty categories of information on every British citizen, but this was scrapped in 2010 over human rights and security concerns. More recently at the 2011 e-G8 summit, President Sarkozy of France and Eric Schmidt of Google argued ‘who could best build the networked society’: big government or the corporations? Ben Hammersley, in his British Council lecture then argued ‘that we are moving to networked societies, but we do not yet know how to build them’. Meanwhile global online communities continue to evolve regardless, with over 900 million users signed up to Facebook actively transacting personal data from identity accounts designed to optimise corporate advertising revenues.

Citizens, who nominally hand over their collective power to the state at election time, now need more control of how their identity is represented as both governments and corporations make decisions on our behalf; data protection law needs to be extended to the intellectual property rights of the digital self. Governments could begin translating passports, driving licenses and birth certificates into online citizen accounts that embrace human rights, by granting appropriate charters for citizens’ to represent themselves digitally. ‘True Identity’ accounts, a form of digital passport, could then provide a unique master key for authenticating digital  transactions with utilities, banks and social networks, without handing over data to second or third party providers.

Online citizen accounts, chartered by government for identity  creates opportunities for an alternative peer2peer economy network to emerge for transacting money, including layers of banking, savings and loans. A financial network without the expensive costs imposed by service providers, only using money issued by government, guaranteed by users through identity accounts. This would enable all currency to be invested back into the social environmental economy to create a robust utility focused solely on the needs of the community that it served. From these citizen-centric themes trust could evolve to transform hierarchical representative democracy into a participatory network society.

Written and Published by Oliver Ashton and Fred Garnett

@oliverashton – @fredgarnett

Mobile Transaction Economy

Creating Economy Networks, One Transaction at a Time

Peerpay is a peer2peer mobile wallet facilitating NFC Text transactions. The product is free to download and free to use, offering pricing transparency, coupons, discounts, peer cash-back and  augmented reality [AR] search. Merchants can operate hyper local customer loyalty programs; text,  splash page and location marketing; plus group settings to reward customers  for shopping locally on the high street.  

Peerpay takes advantage of changes in consumer behavior in social networks, e-commerce and

online banking. This opportunity coupled with online mobile technology gives Peerpay room to slash debit credit card costs, by circumnavigating merchant card payment terminals; cutting direct to consumer charges, indirect hidden charges, out-dated land based banking infrastructure and expensive cash machines.  

Peerpay reengineers digital money to flow more freely between the population by giving the processing power back to the merchant, who in turn can pass the cost savings back to the consumer through the customer service model. Using money with out expensive intermediary service providers stops extraction and stimulates the local economy to fulfill a self generative wealth cycle to create an economy network one transaction at a time. 

Peerpay makes online transactions more relevant in the everyday by linking online with offline  through a mobile wallet solution. This creates an economy network that cuts costs, makes  faster payments and reengineers the distribution of profit. A repurposed digital transaction network that gives your money back to use your own way.  

Peerpay's vision comes with social responsibility and a belief that healthy economic growth comes from only working with money that exists, transacted through transparent accounting models. Peerpay aims to grow networks of the future now, to create a participation society based on true identity, trust and self governance.

If you have a question about Peerpay, or a product that you feel could be launched on the Peerpay network then please contact Oliver Ashton and Fred Garnet: 

oliver@oliverashton.com - fred.garnet@gmail.com 

Peer2Peer Banking Network

Building the Transaction Economy, One Transaction at a Time.  

Thundrbump is a peer2peer transaction network offering person2person loans, investments, shares and mortgages at social rates. Thundrbump meets a need to innovative a social economic response to out dated, extractive and expensive intermediary service providers by creating a sustainable economic future using only money that exists. A robust utility focused solely on the needs of the community that it serves.

We can visualise Thundrbump in terms of innovation waves created from social technology transformation. Companies that best capture this meme are WEB 1.0 Google [search], WEB2.0 Facebook [social], WEB 3.0 Thundbump [participation]. Thundrbump rides the next technology wave through online mobile accounts, to create an interconnected society on a P2P super highway. A revolution built upon a new transaction economy. 

www.thundrbump.com 

Contact: oliver@oliverashton.com  Fred.garnett@gmail.com

Transition Transaction

Creating A Network Society. One Transaction at a Time. 

 

Having begun in Totnes, there are now 372 UK Transition "Towns" that share ideas, developing templates that can be used as frameworks for other towns to develop complementary, resilient local green economies with hyper local redevelopment. The term ‘transition’ is based on a belief that we need to prepare for a post-peak oil economy with an environmentally sustainable approach. The focus on ‘towns’ comes from the need for cultural change in social and economic behaviours from within an organisational population structure that can support transition through local community action. 

If we use product life-cycle analysis to look at the environmental impact of consumer goods on the planet, we find that the raw materials that create the products come from all over the world; that production has heavy energy costs, high water usage and the distribution network is environmentally unsustainable [airplanes, lorries, container ships]. Both the true economic cost and environmental impact of manufacturing are hidden by accounting systems that are askew with the global resources that are available.

It could also be argued that the existing international financial system is not fit for purpose. It is based on an accounting system devised by 14th Century, Italian money lenders to ‘extract’ wealth from local producers, to reinvest with merchants to explore the world and return with valuable goods for trade. Initially, this was extracting money from the poor to the rich parts of town, but in a modern global economy we move trillions in currency instantaneously away from home based economies which can be highly destructive. As we have seen, when an international financial crisis occurs, local wealth has all but been removed, reinvested in volatile markets or traded as 'credit default swops' [debts repackaged for investment].    

Transition Towns’ answer to “extractive” banking is a Local Exchange Trading System [LETS], which keeps wealth in the community using alternative currency for barter, such as the Lewes or the Totnes pound. However, the dominant mode of exchange outside LETS micro environments remains the original currency, which is still recorded as payments through extractive accounting systems in the hands of traditional banking infrastructure. LETS remains unconnected with the dominant currency used for trade, which suggests why it has not emerged as a transformative answer to the global economic down turn and the impending Euro Zone Crisis.

Ben Hammersley points out in ‘Toward an Internet of People’ (2011), that we live in networked times controlled by people who grew up in a hierarchical society. Banks are hierarchical private companies based on extractive models that cannot or will not change. The solution then exists in the online network society to create an independent financial framework, without changing societies social relationship with the currencies that exist. We can re-vision this new formula for transacting to include LETS, credit unions and cooperative solutions operating in networks of interconnected personalised Peer2Peer’  [P2P] accounts. 

The technology now exists to perform P2P transactions through online mobile devices operating from payment-processing platforms. This technology removes transaction costs all together, for money to flow freely throughout the population, circumnavigating expensive, intermediary service providers, giving processing power back to the merchant at the point of sale. This stops extractive accounting mechanism from draining resources away from the original communities, enabling a cycle of continuous reinvestment back into the economy or to be diverted into social charitable causes etc. 

Combined with a transformative, social, ecological mindset, P2P transaction networks emerge as robust utilities focused solely on the immediate needs of the community that they serve. Local merchants can compete with global brands through loyalty schemes that reward consumers with cost savings, to encourage economic growth in a self-generative sustainability model. Currency, raw materials,  products, merchants and consumers remain in a local vicinity which in turn rewards the local community with a more diverse economic ecosystem, a greener, more resilient economy. 
 

Wriiten by Oliver Ashton & Fred Garnett.

Creating technology platforms that re-engineer payment banking infrastructure. Seeking solutions to extractive  models for  environmental economic transformation. 

If you have a product that fits into our vision of the Transaction Network Society, please get in touch. We are looking for technology partners, investors and people to help us e-engineer the future now.

Contact: oliver@oliverashton.com - fred.garnett@gmail.com