eumo
Japanese 'empathy community currency' created by former fund manager Kazuhiro Arai, in circulation since 2019 as gift money that expires after three months so value keeps circulating instead of being hoarded. Payments at member merchants and communities carry messages of gratitude, and expired balances are redistributed to community projects under each community's own rules. It is run by the nonprofit-type stock company eumo as part of a wider Japanese movement for an empathy-based economy.
A live Japanese implementation of expiring money: a gift currency with a hard 3-month demurrage-style expiry, gratitude-message payments, and community redistribution of lapsed balances — the Wörgl/Gesell lineage running as a smartphone app since 2019. Culturally powerful and structurally anti-hoarding, but small, centralized, and yen-anchored.
M69 Score
Scored against the Money2069 Manifesto — see methodology. Higher = more aligned.
Detailed Rating Breakdown
Issuance Model3x3.0
Prepaid, debt-free issuance (IM-02:5) with a structurally enforced 3-month expiry that makes supply contraction automatic and continuous (IM-05:5) — a modern Freigeld design; but eumo Inc. is the single platform issuer (IM-01:1) and issuance follows charging, not an economic rule (IM-03:2).
Spending Power Stability2x3.0
Nominally 1 eumo = 1 yen at charge time; the design deliberately rejects store-of-value in favor of circulation, so long-term purchasing power is out of scope by intent (SPS-05:2); yen benchmark (SPS-02:3) and stable nominal operation since 2019 (SPS-04:4).
Fiat Independence & Interoperability2x1.0
Charged from and denominated in yen on a centralized platform (FI-01:1, FI-02:1); its one distinctive strength is native support for communities issuing their own sub-currencies on the shared platform (FI-07:4).
Traction2x3.0
About 10,000 users and ~200 million yen of cumulative flow (TR-03:2) over six years of continuous operation (TR-02:4), with corporate programs, an academy, and events running through July 2026 (TR-01:4); exceptional narrative and cultural identity for its size (TR-11:5) and genuinely values-driven adoption (TR-09:4).
Sovereignty1.0
Fully custodial centralized app; the company controls balances, expiry, and redistribution (SO-01:1, SO-04:1).
Governance2.0
Nonprofit-type stock company with a published philosophy and per-community redistribution rules (GO-07:3), but decisions rest with a small board and rules can change without participant vote (GO-02:2, GO-08:2).
Resilience2.0
Six years of operation on a small company's balance sheet; roughly ¥240M crowd-raised plus service revenues, but the funding horizon and single-platform dependency are real risks (RE-07:2, RE-02:2).
Inclusivity4.0
Open to anyone in Japan with the app (IN-01:4) at near-zero cost (IN-02:4); expiry structurally prevents accumulation (IN-07:5) and expired balances are redistributed to community projects (IN-04:5); light app-account identity only (IN-06:3).