Local Loop Merseyside platform design

High-level Service Overview

Catchment area

Local Loop will be delivered via an app-based platform, which will enable us to introduce a whole roadmap of services to build the local economy.

In addition to operating in Merseyside, we propose including an area of more rural character close to the city, in the hope of fostering local food trade connections.

The Local Loop app will have three tiers: On the Map, In the Loop, and Clear the Debts.

On the Map

There is a significant quantity of public data available on businesses and organisations across the UK, and we intend to use this to start mapping the Merseyside economy. We will publish a geo-spatial interactive map of this data, using the open-source Murmurations protocol.

It will be free for organisations to get themselves On the Map and share additional data through their profile. This will result in an interactive directory. The Murmurations protocol is expressly designed to make it easy and simple for organisations to keep their information up-to-date.

In diagrammatic form, the On the Map tier can be represented by a pale blue disc where organisation data - mostly consisting of individual organisations as unconnected data objects - will be placed:

In the Loop

Advanced business analysis and networking functionality will be supported through a second, paid tier (represented in orange):

This will involve declaration of local trading relationships. These claims will need to be confirmed by the named organisations. The data provided by Members will be used to create a key feature of this tier - the trade connections graph:

We will use this data to deliver business insights and advanced business networking, co-designed with local partners to reward more active membership. Through a previous survey we were able to collect a significant amount of trading relationship data:

Clearly, all sorts of conversations and interventions around the local economy become possible once these structures are made visible.

Clear the Debts

Based on the density of their local connections, Members may be invited to the third Clear the Debts tier.

This will allow members to access various ‘clearing’ tools as appropriate to their pattern of local trading.

The simplest and most widely applicable of these will be Loop Clearing:

This can be done without any need for handling payments, and we can expect to eliminate ~10-15% of the average B2B Member’s local trading debts.

We will follow this with Fan Clearing, which uses liquidity injections to multiply the impact of Loop Clearing and reach more businesses:

By targeting and prioritising payments in the parts of the trading network where they will go the furthest, Fan Clearing can have a truly transformative impact. It will likely be delivered on the basis of a partnership with a payment services platform, who will provide a local payment method and ‘virtual card’.

In the future, Mutual Credit Clearing will allow clusters of businesses with the highest levels of inter-trade to create endogenous liquidity.