The financially underserved
For those whom conventional finance prices out or passes over, time is the one asset they already hold. A union denominated in hours meets them where their wealth actually is.
The settlement substrate
An hour is the only unit
everyone is paid in.
time.gives is a regulated credit union that treats time — and the energy it takes — as the numeraire. Members hold balances denominated in hours, settle obligations in mutual credit, and earn a return measured in the one resource no balance sheet can manufacture.
The name is the argument. Time is what each of us is given; time is what we give back. We keep the ledger.
- Numeraire
- 1 hone hour, physically grounded
- Mechanism
- Mutualcredit, not deposits lent on
- Ownership
- 1 : 1one member, one vote
- Horizon
- ∞designed to outlast its founders
The thesis
Money forgets what it cost. Time does not.
Every currency is a claim on someone else's hours. We make that claim explicit. An hour of attention, of care, of skilled labour is the substance behind every price — so we denominate in it directly. A balance at time.gives is not a promise indexed to a central bank's discretion; it is a record of hours given to the commons and hours owed back to it.
Because time cannot be printed, the unit cannot be debased. Because energy bounds what an hour can do, the unit stays tethered to physics rather than sentiment. This is the oldest accounting in the world — the favour, the rota, the reciprocal obligation — rebuilt as regulated infrastructure that scales beyond the people who can remember it.
- i
Time is the numeraire. Balances and prices resolve to hours before they resolve to pounds. Energy is the floor beneath the hour.
- ii
Credit is mutual. The union does not lend members' savings to strangers for profit; members extend credit to one another and the union keeps the books straight.
- iii
The surplus returns. Any surplus is rebated to members or reinvested in the common fund. There are no external shareholders to satisfy.
How it works
From an hour given to an obligation settled.
-
01
Join the common roll
Membership is open to anyone sharing the common bond — by locality, trade, or community. You subscribe, you are verified, and you hold one vote regardless of your balance.
-
02
Give time, record the hour
Hours given — to a neighbour, a project, the commons — are logged to your account as credit. The ledger is the union's single source of truth, denominated in hours and reconcilable to sterling.
-
03
Settle in mutual credit
Draw on your balance to settle obligations with other members. Credit clears between accounts without anyone's deposits being lent away. Balances net toward zero across the membership.
-
04
Share the surplus
At the close of the year, any surplus is rebated to members or held in the common fund. The return you earn is measured in time returned to the people who gave it.
Who it is for
Built for the people the system underprices.
Time-banking communities
Established time banks and reciprocity networks gain a regulated balance sheet beneath their hours — clearing, custody, and continuity without surrendering the principle that an hour equals an hour.
Mutual-credit networks
Trade circles and complementary-currency systems plug into a settlement layer that nets obligations across the membership and reconciles cleanly to sterling when it must.
The wider constellation
time.gives is the substrate beneath the related entities — the layer in which obligations between them ultimately clear, denominated in the one unit they all share.
Regulatory position
A standalone institution, by design and by statute.
time.gives is constituted as a United Kingdom credit union — a member-owned, not-for-profit financial co-operative — operating within the perimeter supervised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and the Financial Conduct Authority. As a regulated entity it stands deliberately apart from the rest of the constellation: its governance, capital, and member obligations are ring-fenced and cannot be commingled with adjacent ventures.
That separation is a feature. The settlement substrate must be the soundest thing in the system. We hold ourselves to the conduct, capital, and consumer-protection standards expected of a regulated mutual, and we publish our position plainly to the membership that owns us.
Indicative description of intended structure. Authorisation, permissions, and depositor-protection arrangements are confirmed at the point of regulatory registration; nothing here is a financial promotion or an offer of regulated services.