BarCampBank "lang=en": P2PMoneyDiscussion

P2 PMoney Discussion

This discussion is moved from P2PMoney and should be refactored on the previous page

I'd like to echo here a discussion happening currently on the French branch: how could we use existing tools to implement P2PMoney ? More specifically the question goes along the pooling of money for small projects: There are a couple of individuals that interact repeatedly in the context of a mall project (e.g. BarCampBank ) and they need to buy things at some points or organize specific events. With traditional banking and payment systems, it is quite tedious to do this and avoid accumulating too much money on the bank account of one of the participant. Maybe using a mix of Fundable and SpicyDigits could do the trick. Maybe this can be view as a contest: who could propose the most simple solution to do what was just described? -- FredericBaud

See my response here: CoDevProposal.

What exactly is the qualification of "most simple"?

Alternatively, Fundable and/or SpicyDigits would be the easiest short-term possibility that I know of. -- SamRose

I agree and was aware that "most simple" is kind of meaningless, but the kind of workflow I was thinking of is involving a mix of what Fundable and SpicyDigits are offering. So most simple probably meant that I'd already be happy having a nice back and forth workflow between Fundable and SpicyDigits.
But beyond that, I also see many other features that are not currently there and would like to refrain myself and keep things simple.
In fact, on the money pooling side, I see both backward (SpicyDigits) and forward (Fundable) aspects coming in. Typically, I'd find interesting for a distributed project to be able to:

Have a place where pledges for money can be stored and easily committed
Have a way for the group to define different future expenses, vote for prioritization and approval.
Have a way to make direct payment to the vendor in the case of a large payment
Alternatively, there is a way to transfer cash to one of the participant to make the payment
Have a way to enter, track, approve past expenses incurred by different participants (above feature would provide a reimbursement mechanism)

I won't go here in the details of the implementation, but this could be part of a "requirement and specification document" that could be collaboratively produced as a starting point in the

CoDevProposal. I can also easily see the revenue sharing integrated into the whole picture.
As an FYI, I sent a cold email to SpicyDigits at contactus@spicydigits.com pointing them to this Forum

. We'll see if we gather any interest from them. Maybe we could give them a phone call at ( +1 415 234-5678 - ext: SPICY1)if need be.
We can still see if there's a way to gather enough interest through the web and get some traction on what we are currently trying to define and design. -- FredericBaud

As an FYI, all my mails to SpicyDigits got bounced (maybe not a good sign for the state of this project. I've just wrote a new post on the subject on my blog. I'm planning to send a mail to the people at Fundable to see if we can get traction with them. -- FredericBaud

Will be interesting to see how they respond. Last time I emailed Fundable, they were responsive, so hopefully they will be with you, too.

A quick run-down of your listed ideas above, and how they compare with what exists in CiviCRM/Drupal, which I believe to be a good candidate as an open source platform to modify for creating what we are talking about:

Have a place where pledges for money can be stored and easily committed

This exists in CiviCRM

Have a way for the group to define different future expenses, vote for prioritization and approval.

This does not exist in the way that you describe in CiviCRM, but it does exist in other Drupal modules, and could be combined with a modified CiviCRM

Have a way to make direct payment to the vendor in the case of a large payment

Not a feature of CiviCRM, but could be part of the Revenue sharing payment mechanisms that I/we are interested in incorporating. I don't know what the situation is in France, or Europe in general. But, in the US, it would be good to be able to pay Visa/MasterCard Debit cards, all major credit cards, bank checking savings accounts via acct and routing number, and paypal. CiviCRM currently takes payment from all except drect debt of checking/savings account.

Alternatively, there is a way to transfer cash to one of the participant to make the payment

not a feature of course, of CiviCRM, but could be.

Have a way to enter, track, approve past expenses incurred by different participants (above feature would provide a reimbursement mechanism)

this is where possibly a large chunk of work exists, but not impossible, I think. Actually, it may be that both drupal and Joomla already have a development kit that makes creating forms that handle this easier.

Of course, we should do some research and look at what exists in the realm of open source software, what is actively maintained, and what has a community that will support. Perhaps there are python solutions, for instance.

Based on my own research, it looks like drupal/php comes the closest to doing what we are looking for, though. Would be good to create a merged vision on CoDevProposal and we can put that page on this wiki as well. Once we figure out the best platform/language to make this in, we can approach developers and others out there and see if we can get some interest and participation in this. Sound good?-- SamRose

Sam, JeanChristopheCapelli and I were talking the other day about the possibility of having P2PMoney - if we feel there is enough people interested in discussing it - as the subject of BarCamp:BarCampBankFlashMeeting6. If you are potentially ready to participate, please let us know. I could also send a mail to LouisMontagne who has organized lately a BarCamp:DrupalCampParis to see if he is interested in providing feedback on the all idea. -- FredericBaud

Sounds like a great idea to me. When were you all thinking about having BarCamp:BarCampBankFlashMeeting6 ? Doodle's got it for feb 28 and Mar 07.

Even if it turns out that I can't do this, I would definitely help to refine this idea for presentation to the Drupal community.

Also, are there huge differences between the types of transaction types that I describe in the US, and the types of transactions that are typical in France? (Credit/Debit card, bank account direct debt, and paypal)

Additionally, I don't know anyone personally from the CiviCRM developer community, but maybe we can convince some of them to join our discussion? -- SamRose

I have to create a new Doodle vote. 28 Feb was finally a bad date (in the middle of vacations here in France), so we let it pass away. In fact, there are two choices for the date, either we want to try having new people (like members of the Drupal or CiviCRM communities) involved in the flashmeeting and we should shoot for something like end-March/early April to have time contacting these people and brief them over the project. Or we want to synchronize and start structuring things so that we can present something cleaner; then we could try to do that sooner. I'm going to create the Doodle vote with these two possibilities in mind.

I think that something working with paypal would be fine for French people. In fact, French people still do a lot of transactions through checks (especially between individuals). So paypal would seem like a sound choice for the population we are considering. I'm still not very familiar with what it takes to receive payments on your paypal account. I looked at it because I have such kind of payments to organize with some close friends overseas, but I didn't go through all the details yet. -- FredericBaud - Sat. March 10 6:12pm CET

I have created a new vote with Doodle. Anyone interested to participate, please register on BarCamp:BarCampBankFlashMeeting6 and vote using the Doodle link on the top of the page. -- FredericBaud - Sat. March 10 7:20pm CET

Hi Sam, still no response from people from Fundable. I can't tell if this is just they are not interested or email was identified as spam. If you had prior contacts with them, maybe you could send them a mail to double my first attempt. -- FredericBaud - Thur. March 16, 5:02pm CET

Frederic, although I don't know for sure, I am going to take a guess that they, and probably Spicy Digits, are not interested, primarily because what we are talking about will make them quite irrelevant. For instance, Fundable takes a 7% cut of money raised through their site. When we create an open source P2P money exchange system, people won't have any need to use Fundable. That's just a guess off the top of my head. -- SamRose

BarCamp:BarCampBankFlashMeeting6 discussing P2PMoney has been booked for Tuesday March 20, 9:00pm CET, 8:00pm UK Time, 4:00pm EDT. Jean-Christophe and Nicolas were the only one who voted and this was the only date that worked. So we decided to get going. Anyone interested by P2PMoney , please join. -- FredericBaud

Sorry for not voting, but I'll certainly be there. Very interested in seeing this come to fruition. Will post a simple graphic here that outlines all of the incoming and outgoing exchanges that we hope to be able to do with this. I'm 100% determined to see this come into existence, even if I have to build it myself -- SamRose

I think that much of the payments pooling and revenue sharing can be factorized. In fact,this could possibly be implemented as different workflows relying on the same set of engines. I have included a high-level architecture diagram of how things could look like. True, it is very high-level but could serve as a start of a technical conversation (probably not during BarCamp:BarBankFlashMeeting6).

On the functional specifications, I think that we could have something very open on the decision process. Added to admin approval, I think it could be interesting to be able to choose between different schemas like unanimity, qualified majority, majority, grand electors,..

-- FredericBaud

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