National Online Barter Service Expands To Saint John

When Anson Darville moved from Ottawa to Saint John in November 2020, he and his wife, Vanessa, missed using BarterPay. Now there are plans to change that with the service’s recent expansion to Saint John.

Darville said they got to the province with some Barter Credits left to spend, but they couldn’t use them locally in Saint John because no businesses here had partnered with BarterPay. He realized there was an opportunity to help these small and medium-sized businesses locally.

“As a Maritimer, it just becomes kind of second nature to barter and trade our goods, it just made sense,” said Darville, who is heading the Saint John branch of BarterPay with his wife. “If a business has something that they want to liquidate, they can offer up those services and goods and get paid in Barter Points.”

BarterPay is a national bartering platform where businesses can barter available time, space or inventory in exchange for other products or services they need. Through Barter Credits, businesses can purchases items they need at wholesale instead of dipping into actual cash.

John Porter, founder and CEO of BarterPay, said the idea is a lot like Canadian Tire money, where the online currency can only be used within BarterPay and can’t be cashed out. He learned about the idea while he studied engineering at the University of Waterloo in the 1990s.

Porter said the idea has been well received across Canada because nearly every small business has spare capacity such as time unsold time, space and products sitting on shelves or in warehouses. It’s a way of continuously giving back to the community, he said.

Many companies, he said, jumped on the bandwagon shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic hit.

“Every business was open to the idea when Covid hit,” said Porter. “This idea of spare capacity just became much more just became bigger because there are so many more businesses that were sitting idle and so many more products and goods that were sitting idle.”

Since launching in Saint John last week, Darville said several businesses and charities have signed on, including Habitat For Humanity and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Saint John.

Businesses can apply by visiting BarterPay’s website and scheduling a phone call with a barter coach who will help owners understand the system, and so BarterPay can understand what each business wants. Coaches also help with marketing companies on the platform.

BarterPay will also give back to the community through the BarterPay It Forward Foundation, which challenges companies to donate Barter Credits to the foundation. It then disperses the credits to qualifying charities across Canada — Habitat for Humanity Saint John and Big Brothers Big Sister is part of that.

“Because it’s a closed-loop system, [charities can] go and spend the Barter Credits right back into the same ecosystem from where they were generated so they can reduce their admin overhead costs,” said Porter.

The fee to apply is $99 and then $25 per month. But as a promotion for Saint John, BarterPay is waiving the application fee for the first 250 companies that sign up, along with the monthly fee for up to six months.

Darville, who also runs a consulting and telecom business, said he’s looking forward to freeing cash to give back to the community. He says most revenue has to go back to the business by keeping it afloat through expenses like overhead — BarterPay changes that.

“It just really excites me because the last 15 months have been hard on small and medium-sized businesses and even more so than it’s been,” said Darville. “Being able to help be part of the solution to help them recover is exciting.”

Aaron Sousa is a summer intern for Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.