Stabletown Local Dollars
Put more local spending to work for local businesses.
Local Dollars is where Stabletown starts: a programmable local-commerce program for cities, chambers, employers, and other community institutions. The program owner defines the goal and rules; a sponsor funds the incentive; residents use it with participating merchants; Stabletown coordinates the network and measures the results.
The Builder is free. The $1,500 Launch Workshop is credited toward your pilot; pilots from $15,000. See pricing
What Local Dollars is
The program comes first. The payment rail comes second.
Stabletown is the infrastructure; Local Dollars is the first consumer-visible application. Instead of starting with a particular card, wallet, currency, or payment network, Local Dollars starts with the local economic behavior an institution wants to support and connects the people required to run that program.
Program owner
A city, chamber, Main Street, tourism organization, employer, or other institution defines the goal, geography, participant group, merchant criteria, program rules, and measures of success.
Sponsor / funder
A city, bank, utility, employer, foundation, hospital, developer, or other sponsor can fund some or all of the incentive pool. The program owner and funder can be the same organization.
Resident / participant
Residents, visitors, or employees receive or earn a Local Dollars reward or benefit and use it with participating local businesses under clear program rules.
Merchant
Participating businesses gain a channel for incremental local demand, accept eligible program spending through the chosen experience, and become part of a reusable local merchant network.
Rail-neutral by design
One program. The right rails for the place.
Local Dollars is defined by the program, not by a particular card, wallet, token, QR code, or payment network. Stabletown determines the program economics and rules; the acceptance and distribution rails are selected to fit the community's existing infrastructure, economics, and goals.
Funding and economics
Define who funds the program, how incentives are created, and how rewards or other program value are allocated.
Eligibility and rules
Set participant eligibility, geography, merchant criteria, earning and spending conditions, limits, timing, and other program policies.
Merchant network
Determine which businesses participate and maintain the merchant relationships and eligibility data that make the program reusable.
Ledger and evidence
Record program activity consistently so operators and funders can understand how value moved and what the program accomplished.
The rails fit the deployment
A community can start with the simplest workable acceptance and distribution method: voucher, QR, merchant code, card, wallet/pass, bank rail, or another appropriate mechanism. Over time, additional rails can be introduced without changing the underlying Local Dollars program or rebuilding the network around it.
Existing infrastructure can stay in place
If a chamber, downtown organization, city, or partner already operates a compatible community card, merchant network, or acceptance system, Stabletown does not need to replace it. Stabletown can sit above that infrastructure to add sponsor funding, participant rules, targeted incentives, program evidence, and additional applications.
Rent the rails. Own the network.
Stabletown coordinates the program configuration, sponsor and participant relationships, merchant eligibility, earning and spending rules, value attribution, application-level ledger and evidence, reporting, integrations, and network history. Payment, wallet, card, banking, stable-value, and other regulated or commodity rails can be supplied by the partners best suited to each deployment.
The leakage problem
Local economies leak. The useful question is what you can redirect.
A local economy is an open system. Spending leaves for many reasons: residents buy from businesses elsewhere, local merchants pay outside suppliers and platforms, and value earned locally may be spent somewhere else on the next transaction. Stabletown does not try to seal a community off from the wider economy. It gives institutions a way to influence the part they can actually change: where the next marginal purchase happens, which merchants and participants qualify, what behavior earns a reward, and what happens afterward.
Spending choice
When a resident chooses a nonlocal chain, marketplace, or provider, less of that purchase reaches the community's own merchant base.
Merchant economics
A local sale still carries real costs — payments, platforms, suppliers, rent, payroll, taxes, and more. The mix varies by business and by rail.
The next purchase
Value earned locally can leave on the next transaction. Recirculation is a behavior to encourage and measure, not a guarantee.
What Local Dollars can change
Direct marginal spending
Fund rewards or incentives that make participating local merchants more likely to win the next eligible purchase.
Encourage repeat local activity
Use program rules to reward additional participation without pretending every dollar will remain inside the community.
Measure the intervention
Track eligible activity, merchant participation, reward use, and repeat behavior against a defined program methodology.
Payment economics are a design variable, not a blanket savings claim.
A Local Dollars program can sit above different payment and distribution architectures. Some deployments may use QR or other non-card flows that change merchant costs. Others may use existing card or wallet rails and incur interchange and processing fees. In some open-loop structures, issuer or network economics may also create a source of rewards that can be directed back into the program. Stabletown's job is to choose and configure the architecture that best fits the program — not to promise one universal fee outcome.
Program results should be measured against clearly defined baselines. Local capture, merchant costs, repeat spending, and payment economics vary by place, participant mix, merchant category, provider, and implementation. Stabletown does not assume that every program dollar remains local.
From idea to a reusable local network
Start with one program. Establish infrastructure you can use again.
The Builder, demo, and Launch Workshop are not standalone planning services. They move a community toward one concrete outcome: a live, measurable Local Dollars pilot that establishes the first Stabletown node for that place.
1. Model the node
Use the free Builder to define the first program: the place, institution, sponsor pool, participant group, merchant network, rules, and outcome you want to influence.
Open the Builder →2. See the network
Walk through a working example so sponsors, operators, merchants, and public partners can see how one program connects the people, rules, value, and evidence around local commerce.
See the demo →3. Design the launch
Use the Launch Workshop to turn the concept into a deployment plan: economics, operating roles, merchant and participant recruitment, rules, measurement, and the decisions required to configure a managed pilot.
See the Launch Workshop →4. Establish the node
The pilot is where planning becomes infrastructure.
The Workshop outputs feed directly into a managed pilot. Stabletown configures the program, helps assemble the merchant and participant network, connects the chosen funding and acceptance workflows, and records the evidence needed to decide what should happen next.
What the first pilot leaves behind
A reusable merchant network
Participating businesses, eligibility data, operating relationships, and acceptance workflows do not have to be rebuilt for every new campaign.
Program configuration
Geography, participant criteria, earning and spending rules, limits, funding logic, and measurement definitions become reusable building blocks.
Sponsor and operator relationships
The institutions that fund, administer, promote, and evaluate the program become part of an operating network for future interventions.
Ledger and evidence history
Program activity, merchant participation, reward use, and reporting create a factual baseline for improving the next program instead of starting from zero.
After proof
Expand the network instead of starting another standalone program.
Once the first pilot produces useful evidence, the same local node can support more activity. A place can add another sponsor, launch a new participant cohort, introduce a different incentive, connect another acceptance rail, or apply the same network to a new local-economic objective.
Add programs
Run seasonal shop-local, visitor, employer, rebate, or targeted-benefit programs over the same core network.
Add funders
Give banks, utilities, employers, foundations, and public institutions another way to fund measurable local interventions.
Add participants and merchants
Grow the network deliberately without rebuilding the operating model each time.
Add capabilities
Introduce new rails, integrations, rules, and more sophisticated applications as the place and evidence base mature.
Still deciding what to solve first?
Find your starting point with the Stabletown Diagnostic.
If you know the local economic outcome but are not yet ready to model a specific program, the Diagnostic maps the goal to a practical Stabletown path and shows which decisions need to come next.