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was awaiting a private ruling on whether it had avoided paying goods and
service tax. For all the shortcomings of this voucher scheme, it is an example of
how to build in incentives for each of the stakeholders. It was owned and run
by Robert Walsh and Peter McNally, whose company McNally Australia Pty Ltd
was based in Gympie, Queensland. There were 900 members at the time of
suspension, down from a peak of 14,000, and regular meetings of participants
were held in each town and suburb.
Essentially, SABC was a voucher system in which members accepted each
others’ vouchers. A development fund was kept separate for investing in
Australian­owned business. The scheme’s ‘loyalty reward shopping vouchers’
were sold in four denominations: V5, V10, V20 and V50. The front of the
vouchers looked almost like Australian money, because they used the same
colours as the A$5, A$10, A$20 and A$50 notes.
The loyalty vouchers, or pre­paid gift certificates, could be used and
traded amongst business members, with no transaction fees applicable. By
accepting loyalty vouchers, some businesses increased their ability to attract
new customers with no risk involved, as the vouchers were 90 per cent
redeemable for Australian dollars from McNally Australia Pty Ltd. Consumers
bought V55 for A$50, thereby gaining 10 per cent purchasing power, and
further incentives were built in.
In contrast with other publicly created currencies, members of the SABC
had no right to essential business information as McNally Australia Pty Ltd
was a private company. Therefore, members never knew how many vouchers
had been sold, how many vouchers had been redeemed or the state of the
business situation of the system.
One of the major issues that confronts businesses when dealing in
alternative trading systems is that of being stuck with complementary currency
they can’t spend. In contrast to the Salt Spring Island Gift Certificates scheme
(see page 000), which redeems merchants’ vouchers at par, the SABC scheme
was set up to stimulate merchants to encourage their suppliers to accept
vouchers too. The scheme did this through built­in incentives, which meant
that merchants didn’t lose out if they could persuade their suppliers to accept
the vouchers.
While at the start of the scheme the option to redeem the currency for
Australian dollars had been taken up for 70 per cent of the vouchers issued in
the first and second years, this figure had dropped to 7.5 per cent by 2002. The
more the businesses used the vouchers among themselves, the less the
vouchers were redeemed, and as a result the issuing company accumulated a
growing amount of Australian dollars. The SABC used these dollars to buy
back foreign­owned businesses and support Australian inventions. In three­