Hacker News Reader

I suppose the system only works as long as the net sum of all transactions arriving (+) and departing (-) any given location is zero in the long term. But I can imagine there are locations that are net payers and others that are net receivers of money. What happens then, to settle the difference?

View on HN

This is straightforward, simple. The funds never cross borders. This is old, established popular exchange system. I expect there are more Hawaladars than there are brick and mortar banks. See Wikipedia.

I understand that money never needs to cross borders. But presumably this only works when there are enough local senders of money to offset the "incoming" funds to be collected by local recipients.

My question was what happens if, for example, people in Helsinki are always only recipients? The Finnish branch of the organisation is providing them with Euros, but if there are no Finnish senders of money (or more likely: the Finns as a group simply don't send as much as they receive) where do the Euros come from?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com