What's Time Banking All About?

An increasingly popular movement in banking offers accounts with no minimum deposit, no interest fees, and a generous rewards program. Interested? Then it is time to check out time banking.

Time banks offer members the chance to earn Time Dollars which can be spent on services such as a yoga class or home repairs, all without any cash being exchanged. How? Using the pay-it-forward concept, time bank members perform community service for other time bank members and in return receive Time Dollars which they can use to get community service-type help in the future.

“Time banking is exciting because it allows members to contribute the things that they like to and can do,” says Mashi Blech who runs the Visiting Nurse Service of NY (VNSNY) Community Connections TimeBank in Manhattan. So far, time banks have more than 100,000 members world-wide. When a new member joins a time bank, they submit a list of what services they can do for others, where they live, and when and how often they are available.

Edgar Cahn, the founder and CEO of TimeBanks USA, created Time Dollars in the late 1980s. He got the idea while recovering from a heart attack. “I didn’t like feeling useless,” says Cahn. “I knew other patients must feel the same way. I thought there must be some way that we can help each other out.” Cahn later developed his idea at the London School of Economics. “I thought, couldn’t we create a new kind of money,” he says. “It was before frequent flier miles and rewards programs, so people really thought that I had lost it.” But, the tax-exempt currency that Cahn dreamed of eventually came to fruition and is known today as Time Dollars.