Time Banking: Converting Time into Currency

Time banking is a more equitable way of acquiring a service, where one’s access to assistance depends on your own selflessness, instead of social status or financial capacity.

As the saying goes, “Time is gold”, and since it’s a valuable resource, Switzerland has decided to turn it into a form of currency. The World Economic Forum (WEF) reports that the Swiss government has launched a time banking program, where people can “deposit” their time to “withdraw” it at a future date when needed.

Under the system, young people volunteer to care for the elderly and deposit the time they devoted into their social security account. When these young individuals grow old and need assistance themselves, they can withdraw from their account and seek the help of a younger individual.

Time Banking Around the World

The concept has already made its way halfway across the globe. In a video it produced, the WEF reports that Beijing has launched a similar program. Under its own time banking scheme, volunteers earn one coin per hour spent with an elderly person. These coins can be redeemed when they reach 60 years old, or donated to senior relatives or friends. Ten thousand coins can earn one a spot in a government-run elderly care facility.   

In a Reddit thread, a user shared a post originally from an Indian social media, where a foreign student narrated how she personally witnessed how the system worked. The student shared that she was renting a house from a 67-year-old landlord while studying in Switzerland, when the landlord had an accident while doing house work and broke her ankle. The student was ready to take a leave from school to care for her but her landlord said it wasn’t necessary as she could withdraw from her time bank. Shortly after, a nurse worker arrived, and assisted the landlord daily, until her full recovery a moth after.

The student said she then understood why, despite having sufficient financial means, her landlord had been volunteering to care for an 87-year-old man living by himself, prior to her accident. It was not for added income (what she wrongly presumed) but to earn hours in her time bank.

At present, the program is only offered in certain regions and is still not on a national scale.

Time Banking Variations

Other groups have come up with variations of the Swiss government’s time banking program.

A website called www.timerepublik.com allows people to offer their services in exchange for “time coins,” which they can collect and use for other services on the platform, later on.

Time Republik describes itself as a purpose-driven social network that now has over 100,000 members from more than a 100 countries.

The platform was developed by Swiss nationals Gabriele Donati and Karim Varini, who launched it in Switzerland in 2012. But the BBC reports that it now has offices in both Switzerland and New York City. It remains profitable by offering their service to companies and providing them with internal websites, for the use of their employees.

In an interview with BBC, Donati admitted that the time banking concept has been around since the 19th century, but they wanted to bring it to a younger, and tech-savvy population.

“We wanted to distance ourselves from financial transactions and find something that could create relationships between people,” said Donati. “Because we truly believe that only through our relationships, you can gain the trust of another person.”