ECO.9:5.1 - Replacing informal credit with advance payment

A constructed cooperative shop has a working practice: trusted customers can pay on their next visit, and the shopkeeper keeps a small record. A proposed online system requires payment before collection. It reduces some collection work but excludes customers who can reliably pay later and cannot prepay.

The useful old contribution is short-term access supported by local knowledge, not the paper notebook itself. The cooperative compares universal prepayment with limited credit accounts. Its authorized manager can offer a two-week trial to ten consenting customers, including newcomers, with a €20 balance limit each. The cooperative has €200 available above its other commitments; a trained worker has two hours each week for these accounts. The manager also has two contingency hours available to complete the trial’s scheduled account work if needed. That worker checks the agreed payment date against the customer’s expected receipts and unpaid purchases, using the same conditions for newcomers and existing users.

The manager chooses this trial because it can preserve later payment while testing whether the proposed account work is affordable. Existing obligations and the terms of customers outside the trial remain unchanged. At each weekly settlement, the existing account records show overdue balances; the worker can also report time spent and any refused purchase. Extend the trial or start routine service only if the weekly account work fits the continuing two-hour capacity, overdue balances stay within the trial’s €20 allowance and customers retain the intended access. Complete the already agreed trial service using the available contingency capacity when needed. If account work takes three hours in the first week, the manager uses one contingency hour, stops new enrolment and reserves the other hour for the final settlement. Expansion is deferred until continuing capacity or a less demanding procedure is available; the trial customers retain the agreed service. This is a feasible trial plan under constructed assumptions, not a report that the trial has occurred.

If the old arrangement also favours the shopkeeper’s friends and excludes similarly situated newcomers, preserving it unchanged does not satisfy the access purpose. The revised arrangement needs an attainable way to assess new entrants. If nobody can perform that work, the proposal remains incomplete.