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barter

Immediate and direct reciprocal exchange of goods or services without use of money

EntityQ484830

Also known as barter economy · barter trade

Subclass of: trade
, gift exchange
, exchange of goods

Overview

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia · Read full article · Text CC BY-SA 4.0

In trade, barter is a system of exchange in which participants in a transaction directly exchange goods or services for other goods or services without using a medium of exchange, such as money. Barter is considered one of the earliest systems of economic exchange, used before the invention of money. Economists usually distinguish barter from gift economies in many ways; barter, for example, features immediate reciprocal exchange, not one delayed in time. Barter usually takes place on a bilateral basis, but may be multilateral. In most developed countries, barter usually exists parallel to monetary systems only to a very limited extent. Market actors use barter as a replacement for money as the method of exchange in times of monetary crisis, such as when currency becomes unstable or simply unavailable for conducting commerce.

Overview

All data

55 statements · 22% with external sources · numbers in brackets are citations

Opposite of: unknown criterion used: medium of exchange
Uses: tangible good
service

On other databases

45 identifiers linking barter across the web's reference databases

Data quality

statements

22%

externally sourced

Source last edited October 20, 2026. AIDB refreshes this page daily.

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AIDB. (2026). barter (Q484830). Retrieved from https://aidb.si/e/barter-Q484830