Editing Barter (section)

==Bartering in business==
In business, barter has the benefit that one gets to know each other, one discourages investments for rent (which is inefficient) and one can impose trade sanctions on dishonest partners.<ref>Canice Prendergast and Lars A. Stole (September 1996) Non-Monetary Exchange Within Firms and Industry, National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 5765.
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According to the [[International Reciprocal Trade Association]], the industry trade body, more than 450,000 businesses transacted $10 billion globally in 2008 – and officials expect trade volume to grow by 15% in 2009.<ref>{{cite magazine |author-link=William Lee Adams |last=Adams |first=William Lee |date=2 November 2009 |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0%2C9171%2C1931665%2C00.html?xid=rss-topstories |title=Bartering: Have Hotel, Need Haircut |magazine=[[Time (magazine)|Time]] |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091029223040/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1931665,00.html?xid=rss-topstories |archive-date=29 October 2009}}</ref>

It is estimated that over 450,000 businesses in the United States were involved in barter exchange activities in 2010. There are approximately 400 commercial and corporate barter companies serving all parts of the world. There are many opportunities for entrepreneurs to start a barter exchange. Several major cities in the U.S. and Canada do not currently have a local [[barter exchange]]. There are two industry groups in the United States, the National Association of Trade Exchanges (NATE) and the International Reciprocal Trade Association (IRTA). Both offer training and promote high ethical standards among their members. Moreover, each has created its own currency through which its member barter companies can trade. NATE's currency is known as the BANC and IRTA's currency is called Universal Currency (UC).<ref>{{cite web|title=Grand Central Barter|url=http://www.grandcentralbarter.com|access-date=11 March 2015}}</ref>

In Canada, barter continues to thrive. The largest b2b barter exchange is International Monetary Systems (IMS Barter), founded in 1985. P2P bartering has seen a renaissance in major Canadian cities through Bunz - built as a network of Facebook groups that went on to become a stand-alone bartering based app in January 2016. Within the first year, Bunz accumulated over 75,000 users<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-10-24/maybe-mark-zuckerberg-should-listen-to-these-canadian-hipsters|title=Facebook Is Trying To Build a Successful Online Marketplace. Here's How One Group Did.|date=24 October 2016|work=Bloomberg.com|access-date=9 August 2017}}</ref> in over 200 cities worldwide.

[[Corporation|Corporate]] barter focuses on larger transactions, which is different from a traditional, retail oriented barter exchange.  Corporate barter exchanges typically use media and advertising as leverage for their larger transactions.  It entails the use of a currency unit called a "trade-credit".  The trade-credit must not only be known and guaranteed but also be valued in an amount the media and advertising could have been purchased for had the "client" bought it themselves (contract to eliminate ambiguity and risk).{{Citation needed|date=January 2010}}
[[File:Pepsi SU label.svg|thumb|In 1973, [[PepsiCo]] established bottling plants in the Soviet Union in exchange for [[Stolichnaya]] vodka. In the late 1980s, new plants were established in exchange for Soviet naval vessels for scrap.<ref name="Roberts">{{cite news |last1=Roberts |first1=Sam |title=Donald Kendall, Pepsi's Chief During the Cola Wars, Dies at 99 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/24/business/donald-kendall-pepsis-chief-during-the-cola-wars-dies-at-99.html |access-date=16 October 2024 |work=The New York Times |date=September 24, 2020 |language=en |quote=A manufacturing agreement was finally signed in 1973 after both parties overcame currency exchange complications: PepsiCo accepted Soviet-made Stolichnaya vodka as payment instead of rubles. As the Soviet Union was collapsing in the late 1980s, PepsiCo struck another deal: It would get to open two-dozen plants behind the corroding Iron Curtain by agreeing to buy 17 Russian submarines and three surplus warships for scrap.}}</ref>|alt=Pepsi-Cola label in Russian: "ПЕПСИ-КОЛА [...]"]]
Soviet [[bilateral trade]] is occasionally called "barter trade", because although the purchases were denominated in U.S. dollars, the transactions were credited to an international [[clearing account]], avoiding the use of hard cash.