Cyclos Open Source on-line and mobile banking software.
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The Cyclos team wishes you a happy and prosperous new year. 2012 has been a busy and exciting year for the Cyclos team. We have seen a strong increase in the interest from the business sector. More and more companies chose Cyclos as their (mobile) payment platform. The amount of downloads increased significantly (over three thousand monthly downloads) and many users joined the forum. Also, two new hosting companies started to offer dedicated Cyclos hosting: www.jelastic.com and www.jvmhost.com. We were invited to speak at some key conferences on (mobile) payments, among them the Cartes conference in Paris, the Global Payment Forum Meeting in Rio de Janeiro and the Changemakers (ICT4DEV) conference in Sao Paulo.

Here some of the improvements and features that have been added in 2012:

High availability, redundancy, performance
Cyclos supports now full clustering which guarantees high availability and redundancy for business critical systems with large user bases and high volumes of transactions. A partner of Cyclos who was testing the SMS module reached a performance of 200 payments per second on a single server. To give some perspective to this number, the record of card transactions for all banks in the Netherlands was set just before Christmas on 483 transactions per second this year. A single Cyclos server could thus almost cover half of all the Dutch Christmas shopping.

Smart phone apps
Smartphone apps for Android, Iphone and BlackBerry have been published at the app stores and the code has been released under the open source license at the SourceForge site. The mobile app was received with lots of enthusiasm. With the mobile app Cyclos offers now the same amount (sometimes even more) channels as commercial banking software.

SMS Module
The SMS module proved to be a real breakthrough for branchless banking projects that use Cyclos. The SMS module supports common banking operations (payment, account information), account registration via SMS, automatic alerts and notifications (low balance alert, received payment), SMS mailings (to individuals and groups), and info texts (sending SMS with a specific keyword will return a SMS with the requested information). The SMS module also allows rerouting of operations to other channels. For example, payment requests can be sent and managed online at Cyclos while users have to confirm & validate the request by SMS.

Test tools
In order to make performance and redundancy testing easier we created a TestTools suite that contains a database generation program and scripts for the Open Source frameworks SoapUI and Selenium. The TestTools have been published Open Source.

IVR (Interactive Voice Response) module
We have build a working prototype of an IVR module based on the Open Source PBX software Asterisk. IVR is considered the most 'low level' and user friendly access channel for banking. It works with mobile phones as landline phones. A user can call a local number and perform operations going through an audio menu and by typing on the telephone keypad. The IVR module is very flexible. New flows and operations can be added easily and it is possible to reroute calls to third party software. For example, a menu option can be added that will route the call to a support center (to be attended by support operators or a call center voice program). We are currently looking for partners that can contribute finishing the IVR module.

Planning for 2013
Our principal goal for this year is to finish the first release of the (long awaited) Cyclos 4 version. Cyclos4 will have many improvements and new modules such as shopping carts, advanced content management, and a modern user interface. In Q2 will will launch a free (world wide) hosting service for community currencies based on the Cyclos4 alpha version. Cyclos4 will not be published under the GPL license. STRO is currently investigating with the help of the Open Source community the possibilities to develop a 'fair trade' license. We can confirm that Cyclos4 will be free for organisations with a social mission and partners of STRO.

All the best,
The Cyclos team

For more information about Cyclos and the Social Trade Organisation, please visit:
www.cyclos.org
www.socialtrade.org
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A complete set of Online banking services: payments, multiple currencies, invoices, loans, alerts and much more.   Cyclos supports Cards & POS modules, ranging from web based POS to more advanced back-end POS systems.
SMS banking: pay your taxi or electricity bill by sending a simple SMS. One of many channels to connect to Cyclos.   IVR banking allows clients to manage their Cyclos account by making a simple call and using voice operations.

 

The Cyclos project Cyclos Open Source software is created by the Social TRade Organizations (STRO). STRO has been working for two decades on a broad range of instruments and approaches that can support private or public initiatives to make money work even in conditions of a semi-permanent economic depression. Through research STRO has developed and tested economical models in pilot projects world wide. To support these models STRO started the Cyclos project in 2003. Cyclos is being published Open Source to allow other initiatives to benefit from the efforts of STRO.

Cyclos offers a complete on-line banking platform with additional community modules such as an e-commerce platform, a card module and a messaging and notification system. In 2005 the first stable version of Cyclos was released and published open source. A project site www.cyclos.org, user forum, and 'wiki' (documentation) site were launched and an active community was formed around the Cyclos software. Over the years Cyclos has become the standard for open source 'home-banking' software. So far, more than 100 organisations and financial institutions have adopted Cyclos as their payment platform. Ten languages are currently supported and volunteers work hard to make more languages available soon.

The new mobile banking module creates opportunities to address new sectors, such as remittances, consumer loyalty programs, mobile shops, cash-in cash-out services, taxi payments, campus payment systems, prepaid cards, and low cost ATM's.
 
Feature list
On-line (home) banking
- Dashboard page with status overview, quick access and message board
- Complete account summary / history (supports print and export)
- Payments (quick payment, installments, scheduled and authorizations)
- Fees & taxes (contribution, transaction fee, demurrage and interest)
- Send & manage invoices
- Loans with possible loan group management for micro finance projects
- Account operators (a user can create operators and assign permissions)
- Personal alerts & notifications

E-commerce
- Market place (offers & wants)
- Alerts for advertisement matching personal interests
- Member directory
- Messaging module
- Brokering / agents module
- Business referrals and transaction qualifications

Mobile Banking
- Sign-up via Mobile
- Payments to other users or administration
- Payment requests (two-way payment)
- Retrieve account information (optional browse through pages)
- Info texts (can be retrieved by sending an SMS with a specific words/alias)
- Notifications & alerts (personal alerts and general alerts & notifications)
- Mailings (from administration and agents)
- Bank and Telecom provider independent
- Custom operations (programming interface that allows adding operations)

POS (Point of Sale) / Cards
- Debit / credit card support
- Security options: PIN, security card code, OTP (one time password)
- On-line card management (activate/cancel/block card and reset/block PIN)
- POS (Point Of Sale) cash-in cash-out payments
- Print daily transaction overview on POS
- Manage POS devices on-line (activate, deactivate and block)

System features
- Account & user management
- Import tools (users and advertisements)
- Content management (translations, pages, images and styles)
- System alerts & logging
- Reports & Statistics
- System tasks (e.g. set system offline and indexing)
- Easy maintenance (all data stored in database and automatic upgrades)
- Strong security (bank level security implementation)
- Programming interface for communication with 3rd party software

 
 
Time for economic innovations One of the key features of Cyclos is its dynamic structure that supports different economic models, which can be adapted and extended according to the needs of the local economic reality.

The current economic and financial crisis has made a lot of people aware that the current monetary system does not properly perform its function of organising the economy along desirable standards. Many people decided not to wait for political solutions. Communities and organisations started to look for financial innovations, based on the local economic reality of their community, region or country. Many of them discovered Cyclos as an effective tool to support their efforts.

Cyclos is developed and tested in Latin America and now offers the know-how and technology that can help the Western world to face the crisis. Cyclos is used in a wide variety of communities, from very small and socially oriented to business communities.
Some examples of Cyclos users are:
- A network of small businesses in Greece using their own currency to stimulate local trade
(see article in The New York Times);
- Regio-money in Switzerland (see their website);
- Trading network in El Salvador, provides cheap loans to small companies (see their website); *
- Transition Town currencies in the UK (see article in the Guardian); *
- In Uruguay the government, local authorities, the cooperative movement and private market parties will use Cyclos to realise cheaper credits for small businesses, to stimulate a more effective monetary circulation and to support for the formalisation of informal businesses
. *
* These projects also use SMS banking.

 
 
Mobile app for smartphones
Easily manage your Cyclos account and make payments. Mobile banking can’t get any easier...
Available for Android, iOS and Blackberry.

 
 
Monetary tools available in Cyclos
Cyclos also offers a set of monetary tools that allow local communities and regions to stimulate their economy and reinforce their social structures. Some examples are mentioned below.

Buy local tools
In Cyclos it is possible to set bonuses and maluses on certain transactions. A bonus can be used to reward an individual that decides to buy locally. At the same time a malus can be charged on people that decided to spend outside their community. Therefore, more money is spent locally, more income is earned locally, which in turn is spent locally again (increasing the local multiplier and stimulating the local economy). This can, of course, disturb the process of local and national specialisation, on the other hand it can help areas to regain their competitiveness.

Demurrage
In times of economic crisis households and firms are afraid to invest and consume (increasing their real money balances). Therefore, central banks increase the money supply to lower the interest rates with the purpose to stimulate investments and consumption. This provokes inflation, that will force people to spend or invest (hold lower real money balances). The big risk of this policy is that when inflation sets in it is often very difficult to stop it. A demurrage, a small tax on the money that households and firms hold, will stimulate people to invest or consume their money (because if they do not do this they will have to pay more tax).
Contrary to inflation this demurrage can be 'switched off' and cannot get out of control. The demurrage creates an income that should provide opportunities for the common good of a community, for instance.
Together with a malus a demurrage is an interesting tool to stimulate regional economies.This approach was advocated by the famous US economist Irving Fisher as an answer to the crisis in the 1930s in his book Stamp scrip. Later, it was also praised by John Maynard Keynes in 'The General Theory' (Keynes 1953, p. 355). Today, Information Technology has created a good opportunity to introduce a similar approach.

Commercial capital for small businesses
Cyclos is permanently introducing new innovations thanks to strong links with STRO projects and partners. Presently, the programmers are working on developments that might become a standard in tomorrow's means of payment. The Cyclos team succeeded in creating a tool that can trace monetary flows using the 'age' of money, and keeping track of how many times it has circulated.
This creates the opportunity to make the means of payment a lot more effective than normal money. It allows to reduce the interests costs for small companies drastically. It can also help governments to manage their expenditures in such a way that it guarantees that 'money' circulates long enough internally until the money becomes externally available.
 
How can I support? Our ambition is to keep Cyclos an innovative and state of the art product. Evidently, the development of Cyclos has its costs. STRO is a non profit organisation and therefore we depend largely on donations. If you want to support Cyclos financially you can contact us or donate directly.