It's Back To The Future As... Barter Meets Bourse

Sun Herald

Sunday January 2, 2000

DAVID POTTS

IT might be a new millennium but bartering, a form of commerce from a previous one, has made a big comeback.

Bartercard will be one of the first floats of 2000, with a sharemarket listing planned in March, about the same time as the long-expected but much-delayed float of 30 per cent of Vodafone.

As befits the hype of the millennium, they will both be pipped by Sales Pursuit, a company specialising in motivational seminars featuring the ``best of the best" speakers. It plans to list next month.

Cash-strapped businesses use Bartercard to trade with each other by swapping their goods or services for somebody else's, with the 21st century twist that the bartering is recorded electronically with trade dollars.

This means the trade dollars earned by bartering with one business can be used to buy something from another.

``We are the world's biggest trade exchange," said managing director Brian Hall.

Last month Bartercard, which started on the Gold Coast nine years ago and has spread to eight countries and is about to launch in the US, passed the $2 billion mark in transactions of trade dollars.

Even the GST will be paid for in trade dollars, which are worth a real dollar each. For Bartercard the GST ``just zeroes out", Mr Hall said.

The system works like a club with small businesses trading with each other and expanding their networks along the way.

And the more that is traded, the wealthier the Bartercard group becomes. It takes 6.5 per cent commission (5.5pc in cash and 1pc in trade dollars) on both sides of each transaction. There's also a one-off sign-up fee of $895 plus a monthly $12 cash and $18 trade dollar charge.

``We are almost like a bank," said Mr Hall.