Cyclos is open source online banking software for complementary currency systems like LETS, Barter networks, Time banks and exchange systems that are introduced in order to boost the circulation of purchasing power and the availability of credit in regions or countries with under-use of capacities. Shortly the first launch on a national scale will be realised in a program of the Uruguayan government supported by STRO-group. The Cyclos team is also looking for opportunities to allow micro finance institutions easy linkage with their administration to use Cyclos as their transactional (on-line banking) system.

Cyclos is being produced by two teams of programmers, one in Brazil and one in Uruguay, being part of the respective national social trade organisation: STRO Uruguay and Instrodi. Cyclos is published under the GPL (open source) license meaning that it can be downloaded for free and used at no cost. Cyclos is developed in Java and runs on a variety of platforms like Linux, Windows, Macintosh and Solaris. From the start the objective has been to create professional software that is easy to use and maintain, secure, and highly customizable.

The current version offers web based access to an environment where users can administer their accounts, view their transactions, make payments in local units, place advertisements and contact other members. Users can make (secure) payments via web access or mobile phone. In addition to the web and mobile payments it is also possible to administer the emission and intake of vouchers (scrip). The software has an extended administration section with build in automatic functions that make it possible to administer a currency system with minimal manual work.

Cyclos comes with various extra modules like an external payment module which allows webshops to support online Cyclos payments, a POS (Point of Sale) module and a programming interface (API) for integration with third party software. Other modules we are working on are SMS payments and a module to join other currency systems in a distributed (peer to peer) network. A complete list of the Cyclos features can be found at this page.