Silvatree vs Bartercard: What's the Difference?

In short

• Both let businesses trade using an internal balance instead of cash. The difference is structural, and it sits in the published rules.
• On Silvatree, members issue Silva when they trade and the operator can never run a negative balance. Bartercard's Rules let its Manager control the supply of Trade Pounds and hold its own line of credit.
• If the network winds down, Silvatree pays positive-balance members ahead of the operator. Bartercard's Rules extinguish the Manager's own deficit.
• Bartercard can require security, a guarantee and credit-agency checks. Silvatree sizes your Trading Headroom by what you can earn and spend, with no guarantor.
• Before you join either, work through a short due-diligence checklist.

Why this comparison matters before you sign

Most owners weigh a trading network on whether it works. It usually does, for someone. The question that decides your downside is quieter: what happens to the value you earn if the operator mismanages risk, makes a call that suits it and not you, or winds the network down? You tend to learn the answer only when it is already too late to change it.

So hold on to one idea. A network that protects your value by structure is safer than one that asks you to trust how it is run. Structure holds whoever is at the wheel and whatever the market is doing. A promise holds only while the party making it has the will and the means to keep it.

A note on our history

Silvatree's founder, Ian Jones, ran the trade-exchange model for years before building its successor. He was Managing Director of Bartercard New Zealand (1998–2000), President of Bartercard USA (2000–2002) and Managing Director of Bartercard UK (2002–2006), and later consulted across the industry, including for BBX New Zealand (2006–2011).

We say that plainly because it is the reason this comparison exists. Silvatree is not an outsider guessing at how a trade exchange works. It is the model rebuilt by someone who ran it, with the parts that exposed members engineered out. Disclosure beats discovery, and it is the credibility of the piece.

What is each one?

Bartercard is a trade exchange: a managed barter network where businesses buy and sell using an internal currency called Trade Pounds (T£). It is operated by two companies, Barter Traders UK Limited (the Exchange Company) and Bartercard Operations UK Limited (the Manager), the Manager appointed under a Deed of Management (Rules 1.2, 1.3). It is the older, established model, and for many members it has worked for years.

Silvatree is a different model. A Capacity Exchange is a B2B network where UK SMEs sell spare capacity (unsold time, unfilled rooms, empty seats, surplus stock) for Silva instead of cash, then spend Silva on real business expenses. The operator's role is deliberately narrow: to keep the ledger and match genuine spare capacity, never to hold powers no member has.

How do the two compare, line by line?

The differences read most clearly side by side. Every Bartercard cell below traces to a numbered rule in its own trading rules; every Silvatree cell traces to our published terms. This reflects the Trading Rules as published by Barter Traders UK Ltd, as reviewed May–June 2026 (the captured document carries no version or date).

Read the specific rules of any network you are considering. Terms change, and this table reflects the documents as reviewed in mid-2026.

Who issues the Trade Pounds, and who can run a negative balance?

On Silvatree, Silva comes into existence only when members trade. The operator keeps the ledger and is never the debtor on anyone's balance, and a non-negative operator rule stops its own account ever falling below zero.

Under Bartercard's Trading Rules, "The Manager has the right and power to regulate and control the number of Trade Pounds within the Trading Program" (Rule 14.2). The Manager also trades in its own right as an "Extraordinary Member" (Rule 12.1) and "is entitled to a line of credit in Trade Pounds" (Rule 12.2), obtaining trade units by debiting its own account (Rule 6.4(b)).

Those two powers matter together. When a rulebook lets an operator both control the supply of trade units and spend units it has issued to itself, the arithmetic is worth following. Units the operator spends take real goods and services from members, which pushes the rest of the network into credit. Members holding balances they cannot easily spend have less reason to sell for more of them, so the units get harder to spend at their stated value. This is generic to any exchange whose rules permit it. The point is not to assert where any operator stands today. It is that the safe version of the question has a published answer: ask any exchange what its own account balance is, and whether its rules let that balance exist at all.

What happens if the exchange winds down?

This is the test that separates the two models, and both publish their answer.

Silvatree's wind-down protocol puts positive-balance members ahead of the operator. Members in negative positions settle in pounds at par to form a wind-down pot, positive-balance members are paid from it pro rata at par, and the Company's own Reserve Fund holding is structurally subordinated behind them.

Bartercard's Trading Rules describe a different order. After a 90-day balancing period, if the Manager's own Trade Account remains in deficit, the Rules state that "the Manager's liability with respect to the deficit in its Trade Account is extinguished" (Rule 31.2(e)(iii)). If instead the Manager's account is in credit, it shares the dissolution distribution alongside members (Rule 31.2(k)).

So the question worth putting to any exchange is the one its own rulebook answers: if it wound down tomorrow, what happens to your balance, and what happens to the operator's?

How do the fees compare?

Bartercard publishes its pricing plainly, and that is a genuine strength. A prospective member can read the tiers before talking to anyone. As captured on 23 July 2026, its published plans run from an online plan at £0 to join, £15 a month and a 15% transaction fee, up to a premium plan at £1,995 to join, £95 a month and a 2% transaction fee, with the transaction percentage falling as the tier rises. Each tier carries a published sales guarantee. (Bartercard pricing page, captured 23 July 2026.)

Two structural points sit underneath the numbers. First, the rate you sign is not fixed by the rules: Bartercard's Trading Rules set the Transaction/Service Fee at "such percentage of the value of the Trade... as the Manager from time to time determines" (Rule 16.1). Second, that fee may be charged to either or both parties to a trade, in cash or in Trade Pounds, at the Manager's election (Rule 16.1).

Silvatree publishes its Transaction Fee and fixes it in the schedule you sign: 6% in pounds plus 1% in Silva to the Reserve Fund, both paid by the seller. Our joining fee and monthly subscription are set per member rather than by tier, on a smooth sliding scale sized to your capacity volume. That is deliberate. Banded pricing means a member at the bottom of a band can pay the same as one with ten times the capacity. A sliding scale keeps the cost proportionate to what you actually put through the network.

Doesn't Bartercard work for thousands of businesses?

Yes, and that deserves saying without a caveat bolted on. Bartercard has run for decades, its pricing is public, each tier comes with a sales guarantee, and a good broker who knows your trade can put buyers in front of you that you would never have found alone. For plenty of members, that has been real value.

The structural questions are not a charge that any of it fails. They are the questions you would want answered before joining any exchange, Silvatree included: who issues the currency, who can run a negative balance, what the rules say on wind-down, whether you need a guarantee, and what happens to your balance when you leave. A network worth joining will answer them from its own rulebook. Judge each one by what its rules prevent, not by what its pitch promises.

The difference in one line

A trade exchange asks you to trust how it is run. A Capacity Exchange is built so the value you earn is protected by structure rather than goodwill, and structure holds whoever is running it. That is the whole of the difference, and it is visible in the published rules before you sign anything. If the model itself is new to you, start with what a Capacity Exchange is.

Whichever way you lean, judge the exchange by its rules. We have written the questions up as a practical checklist in How to choose a trade or capacity exchange. Work through it before you join any network, ours included.