Regularly we receive requests for advice on trading with CES users from or in other exchange groups, either in South Africa or abroad. This has several angles:

  1. providing goods and services to CES users from ‘out-of-town’
  2. receiving goods and services while ‘out-of-town’
  3. trading with users on other exchange networks

1. ‘Selling’ to users not from CTTE

Providing goods and services to non-CTTE CES users is the same as providing them to other CTTE users. When entering your sales, make sure that you enter the user’s full 8-character account number, e.g. ABCD1234. You do not have to worry about conversion rates if the user is from abroad, as the price you are entering is your price as seller.

2. ‘Buying’ from users in other exchanges

If you are travelling abroad or to another part of South Africa, you can trade with CES users wherever they are.

The first question is how to find them, or rather, how to find offerings in the area you are in?

Log into your CTTE account and then hover over the [Offerings] button and then select the Offerings option from the drop-down menu. That will open the Offerings Index page. On the Offerings Index page, select the country you are in from the Country drop-down list under the Select another exchange sub-heading. Then select an exchange you want to view. After that, select one of the listing options below or do a search of the exchange you have selected.

If you are in an area where the currency is not Talents or based on the SA Rand, you don’t have to worry about conversion rates. The seller will quote their price, and as the seller enters the transaction they will enter it in their currency and the amount will be converted into CTTE Talents in your statement.

3. Other exchange networks

Currently there are five networks in the Community Exchange Network: CES Global, CES Australia, CES Taiwan, IntegralCES (Spain) and Community Forge (based in Geneva). Users on any of the three CES networks can see what is available on the other CES networks (see under Offerings) and so trading with them is fairly easy. The other two networks are currently invisible to CES users but trade between then can take place. In some parts of the world (e.g. Spain and Greece) there are CES exchanges in the same area as exchanges from the other networks so trade occurs at markets.

Under the Trading button you will find an option called Remote Transactions. Use this to enter your trades. It works the same way as the normal transaction entry forms, but requires one more piece of information: the Network ID (NID). This can be obtained from the lookup button.