
Arcipelago SCEC
Arcipelago SCEC is an Italian association that runs a complementary currency called the SCEC. A seller picks a discount, usually between 5 and 30 percent, and the buyer covers that part of the price in SCEC instead of euro. The association hands the SCEC out free of charge and they carry no debt, so the same vouchers keep circulating between members. Members hold a Conto SCEC account online and can move balances between paper and electronic form. More than 120 businesses across Italy are registered in the circuit, and the association has groups in all twenty regions.
Italy's national complementary currency, run by an association founded on Vesuvius in 2008, and the catalogue's first Italian entry outside Sardex and the time banks. A seller picks a discount of 5 to 30 percent and the buyer covers that part in SCEC, which the association hands out free and which carry no debt. It scores 2.6. The live evidence is good: an account system and a merchant directory that both render server-side with today's date, between 121 and 140 registered businesses across eight regions, and a service migration to a new host in 2025. The public website is another matter, with no content since 2022, an empty news page and its own sitemap and social image still pointing at a dead .org domain. The newest independent coverage anyone has written is from 2018.
M69 Score
Scored against the Money2069 Manifesto — see methodology. Higher = more aligned.
Detailed Rating Breakdown
Issuance Model3x3.0
IM-01 2: the association distributes the vouchers to registered members through its Punti SCEC. IM-02 5: the association states plainly that the SCEC is issued free of charge and creates no debt, and nothing in the design contradicts that. IM-03 2: members receive an allocation rather than an amount tied to output, though the vouchers only move inside real purchases. IM-04 3: no published cap, and the association decides distribution. IM-05 2: the vouchers are designed to be reused indefinitely, with no burn, no expiry and no redemption, so supply only grows. Category average 2.8.
Spending Power Stability2x2.0
SPS-01 1: nothing enforces the value; 100 SCEC equal 100 euro because the association says so. SPS-02 3: the euro is the reference, a single well-defined low-inflation currency. SPS-03 2: the convention is published, but no circulation figure, no accounts and no methodology are. SPS-04 3: eighteen years at a fixed convention that nothing can move, so the nominal figure has never deviated while acceptance has. SPS-05 2: the site describes a nominal one-to-one convention using purchasing-power language, which is the definition of conflating the two. SPS-06 2: Italy, members only. Weighted 2.21.
Fiat Independence & Interoperability2x3.0
FI-01 2: the SCEC has its own name, symbols and vouchers, and its value is defined by parity with the euro. FI-02 5: no reserves at all, nothing backing it but acceptance. FI-03 4: the currency runs on paper and on the association's own server; the bank account and PayPal button are only for donations. FI-04 3: no oracles exist, but the denomination is euro-derived. FI-05 3: a euro collapse would break the pricing convention rather than any mechanism, and no migration path is written down. FI-06 2: the SCEC is used exclusively alongside euro by design, so the fiat pairing is permanent. FI-07 4: the SCEC carries a different symbol for each of Italy's twenty regions and the regional variants remain interchangeable, which is local expression on one standard. FI-08 1: a closed circuit with no cross-system settlement design. Weighted 3.09.
Traction2x2.0
TR-01 3: the account system, the merchant directory and the geographic lookup all render live and stamp today's date, while the public website has published nothing since 2022 and the news page renders its heading with nothing under it. TR-02 5: founded on 5 April 2008, eighteen years. TR-03 1: no member count is published anywhere, and this score is the absence of a measurement rather than a small one. A published figure would move it two bands. TR-04 3: the live directory paginates to seven pages of twenty, so between 121 and 140 registered businesses, spread across Tuscany, Friuli, Abruzzo, Campania, Veneto, Piedmont, Liguria and Sardinia. TR-05 2: prices are quoted in euro and the SCEC covers a percentage of them. TR-06 3: no leadership is named on any surface, and the 2025 system migration shows somebody is still running it. TR-07 2: municipal relationships are described but none is named or verified. TR-08 3: Italian specialist and regional press between 2015 and 2018, a listing on the Italia che cambia map, and a mention in the Italian Wikipedia article on local currencies. TR-09 4: entirely voluntary with no subsidy, the discount itself being the only incentive. TR-10 2: no published figures, a frozen website and a dead .org domain. TR-11 3: a fully formed identity, born on Vesuvius in 2008 with its own name, regional symbols, anti-debt creed and TV channel, attached to a community that has gone quiet. Weighted 2.49.
Sovereignty2.0
SO-01 3: the association could lose its server tomorrow and the paper vouchers in members' hands would keep working. SO-02 1: a closed PHP system with no published source. SO-03 2: one legal entity in one country. SO-04 3: electronic balances sit on the association's server, while paper SCEC are bearer instruments the holder actually holds. SO-05 2: no team is named and the public site has been frozen for four years. SO-06 3: one shared host, and they have already migrated once, in 2025, which is a fallback that has been tested in practice. SO-07 3: an account can be closed, and a paper voucher cannot be. SO-08 3: paper SCEC are anonymous bearer vouchers, while the electronic accounts are named and fully visible to the operator. SO-09 2: the rules are the association's database and its printed vouchers, with no technical enforcement. Weighted 2.36.
Governance2.0
GO-01 3: an Italian association of social promotion has a statute, an assembly and twenty regional groups, and none of the proceedings are published. GO-02 3: one member one vote in principle, unverifiable in practice. GO-03 2: no minutes, no accounts, no circulation figures, and an empty news page. GO-04 3: an association structure resists takeover by money, and a small active core could still take it. GO-05 2: no visible process for changing anything. GO-06 2: no separation between monetary and operational decisions. GO-07 3: the creed is written down and prominent, free issuance, no debt, wealth anchored to the territory, and the statute itself is not published. GO-08 2: nobody publishes how much SCEC is issued or who decides. Weighted 2.40.
Resilience3.0
RE-01 4: eighteen years covering Italy's sovereign debt crisis, which is when it grew, a pandemic, and the loss of its own .org domain. RE-02 3: one host and one website, with paper as the offline redundancy. RE-03 3: paper SCEC survive any server loss and the electronic ledger would not. RE-04 5: the seller picks a discount and the buyer pays that part in SCEC. That is the entire mechanism. RE-05 4: paper does not become obsolete, and the server side moved hosts in 2025 without documentation. RE-06 3: it cannot bank-run because there is nothing to redeem, and its real failure mode is acceptance quietly fading, which has no safeguard against it. RE-07 2: donations by bank transfer and PayPal, volunteer effort, and a website nobody has updated in four years. RE-08 4: paper vouchers work with no network at all and reconcile later, which is exactly what this question asks for. RE-09 1: no API, paper first, human membership. Weighted 2.96.
Inclusivity4.0
IN-01 3: free to join with no minimum and no credit check, and effectively bounded to Italy. IN-02 5: joining costs nothing and the vouchers are handed over free. IN-03 3: paper SCEC need no bank account, no smartphone and no identity document, which serves people with no money well, though no adoption among excluded groups is documented. IN-04 5: the vouchers are given to members for nothing, the association takes no cut, and there is no seigniorage to extract because the SCEC has no reserve behind it. IN-05 4: members are classed as customers, businesses, supporting members and Punti, and the monetary rules are the same for all of them. IN-06 3: registration asks for a name and an email, no government identity document, and the paper vouchers circulate with no account at all. IN-07 3: no demurrage and no expiry, and nothing that accelerates concentration either. Weighted 3.70.