I was thinking of a new kind of local business bank concept. It should be a fully community driven concept, where the community is lending their money for local projects. This projects can be private, like to buy a car, or of a business-kind, like opening a “Spätkauf”. All money transfers are transparent and all projects will have to be approved by a local committee, which will the most insight about a projects success. But why should anybody be willing to gives his money to others? So the main point is that: based on the money given a community member will receive the main part of the interest back.

So if we have an OpenBank with three members Alice, Bob and lets say Klaus, and Klaus likes to take a loan for a new TV. So when he applies for the loan of lets say 3000€, he would have to make a request at the OpenBank. So Alice and Bob invested 2000€ each in the bank, and will have to state their participation in Klaus project. So Alice likes Klaus idea, and will lend him 2000€ where Bob is skeptical and would just invest 1000€ from his base account. So Klaus loan request will be successful and he will have to repay the money with a fixed interest rate of lets say 9% after 12 months From that interest Alice receives 2/3 and Bob just 1/3.

An OpenBank will only operates localy, so that any member of the community is able to understand and check an approved or pending request. No money for loans should be taken from external sources, but the members, so the bank will be always independent. Nobody but the members and OpenBank Infrastructure (servers, technical personal, paper stuff ) will receive the interest.

The concept is not yet complete and there are a lot of questions, about how to react if money will not be repaid, how the relationship will be between lender and debtor …

Well unfortunatly I’m too late with this idea I just found two great banks following that principles: Zopa , SMAVA and Martin just told me about the Grameen Bank