Open Source Credit Unions

We wrote this with the idea of describing an idea for a new kind of credit union.

New Fin-Tech Network for IT Professionals

 

A new network of customer owned Fin-tech coops using open source technologies has will empower IT professionals as owner members to save on fees across a range of financial products while gaining control of their own data.  

The network seeks to leverage financial resources and technical capabilities to develop technology forward services uniquely suited to their requirements. It seeks to leverage existing legal entity structures such as co-operatives and Credit Unions, open source technologies and Open Banking regulations to hand back control to its members.

It will provide a legal entity that members can use to establish their identity and use this to gain access to their data from the coop as well as other existing banking providers and operate their own financial and identity services to fund its operation.   

Entities that join the network will also seek to provide identity services for their members to allow them to assert their identity in a way they control with other technology providers.

This co-op entity will also engage with other financial services providers on advantageous terms for members.

Any profit will be returned to its members on the basis of their involvement and use of the services meaning that members can benefit from their involvement in several ways making good commercial sense to get involved. Their offering will be based on providing a long term good deals to members.

The new network is developing a range of open source capabilities to enable entities in any jurisdiction to customise the technical and legal tools available to suit their owner members and to  federate with existing groups in other markets to offer international services.

To avoid previous rounds of demutualisation and subsequent declines in quality of service intellectual property will be developed under open source licences taking advantage of charity tax law to maximise investment in the wealth existing quality open source financial services software.

We are reaching out to existing Credit Unions, Cooperative IT providers and Federated Social Media operators and Open Source Financial software projects to launch this network.