Two books · One coin · Out now
Trust is the coin. How money moves — and how it can be trusted — in the places the banks left behind.
After 9/11, global finance made a choice: heads the banks, tails the bazaar. Edwina A. Thompson picked up the coin and read both faces — for twenty-five years, from tea with the money dealers of Afghanistan to payment corridors into Syria under bombardment. One book holds the evidence. The other tells the story.
Start here · pick your time
Two minutes
The idea, in one line
“Money is a language for making trust travel beyond the people we know: a promise, a name, a record, a judgement that an obligation will survive distance.” Everything else follows from that.
Where it leads ↓Two flights
The Other Side of the Coin
Ten chapters, no footnotes. What happened when the researcher stopped studying the problem and started operating inside it.
The story ↓The ledgers
The Archive Edition
The 2011 Oxford University Press study, back in print with a new preface and appendix — for those who need the histories, the data and the footnotes.
The evidence ↓The story · New
New · 2026
The Other Side of the Coin
Edwina A. Thompson
Wombat House
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The Other Side of the Coin
Trust, Money and Judgement in the Places the Banks Left Behind
“How much better to get wisdom than gold, and good judgment than silver!”
Proverbs 16:16
In the weeks after September 11, 2001, global finance made a choice: heads the banks, tails the bazaar. Western institutions constructed a vast architecture of compliance that locked out millions — from overseas workers sending remittances home to humanitarian agencies trying to keep hospitals running. As formal finance retreated, a theatre of compliance took over, rewarding the tick-box over the ground truth.
For the next twenty-five years, whenever money had to move where banks would not go, Edwina A. Thompson followed it — as academic researcher, disaster operator, government adviser and fintech founder. She picked up the coin and read both faces. Her journey runs from tea with the money dealers of Afghanistan to bin bags of hospital payment cards crossing into Syria under bombardment; from famine in Somalia and the wreckage of Super Typhoon Yolanda to remote mining communities in Papua New Guinea. Along the way she reveals the unsung heroes — merchants, midwives, field agents and record-keepers — who hold societies together when institutions walk away.
Told with understated wit, sharp field insight and profound empathy, The Other Side of the Coin is a gripping record of how trust actually works in the places the banks left behind. In an age dominated by de-risking, automation and accelerating artificial intelligence, Thompson delivers a vital perspective on what must remain human when technology can do almost everything. This book is for anyone building, funding or governing systems whose consequences will be lived by someone else.
Bookshops: orderable through your local bookshop soon
Contents · introduction and ten chapters
- IntroTrust, Twenty-Five Years On
- 1The Coin Flip
- 2The Women in the Market
- 3When the Banks Left
- 4The Upside-Down Planet
- 5The Seven
- 6The Record-Keepers
- 7The Theatre of Compliance
- 8The Book That Must Not Burn
- 9Back to the Future
- 10Human Judgement
- Published
- 2026 · Wombat House Publishing
- Length
- Introduction and ten chapters · about 40,000 words
- Formats
- eBook · Hardback
- ISBN
- 978-1-7648426-5-5 (eBook) · 978-1-7648426-4-8 (hardback)
- Companion to
- Trust is the Coin of the Realm — the evidence behind every chapter
The evidence · Archive Edition
Archive Edition
Trust is the Coin of the Realm
Edwina A. Thompson
First published OUP 2011
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Trust is the Coin of the Realm
Lessons from the Money Men in Afghanistan · Archive Edition
The book behind the book: years of fieldwork among Afghanistan's money dealers, first published by Oxford University Press in 2011 and out of print for years. Back, unrevised, with a new preface and appendix.
Trust is the Coin of the Realm shines a rare light into the labyrinth of Afghanistan's ‘money men’ and their influential informal economy that links the Islamic world. Hawala is the ancient financial system that predates Muhammad, and provides a vital key to engaging with many of the world's traditional cultures. Stereotyped as ‘built for terrorism’ and a dangerous pipeline for dirty money in the wake of 9/11, Thompson reveals it to be indispensable to the work and reach of humanitarians, donors, family members, and the business community. Outsiders striving to build states and peace in crisis countries will find this book invaluable for earning the trust that is essential if their efforts are to make a lasting difference.
Bookshops: orderable through your local bookshop soon
- Edition
- Archive Edition, 2026 — the 2011 text unrevised, with a new preface and appendix
- First published
- Oxford University Press, 2011
- Published
- Wombat House Publishing
- Formats
- eBook · Hardback (389 pp)
- ISBN
- 978-1-7648426-0-0 (eBook) · 978-1-7648426-2-4 (hardback)
If you only read one chapter
Praise for the first edition
“A fascinating foray down the alleys of the ‘hawala’ world, this book is as rich in its insights as it was daring in its research. There are lessons here for both policy makers and scholars, for the concerned citizen as well as the international expert. If we insist on behaving as ‘ugly Westerners’, Thompson leaves us without excuse.”
“Thompson's masterful approach has tapped into a crucial intellectual and very human component that we must draw upon in order to understand the nexus of terrorism, religion, the worlds of licit and illicit finance, corruption, government legitimacy, and insurgency. She has woven these strands together brilliantly in a manner that should inform the design and implementation of coherent peace-making and state-building strategies, not just in Afghanistan, but all around the world. A must read for policy makers, practitioners, and informed publics.”
“Thompson offers an analysis which boasts a rare combination of theoretical and policy relevance. While scholars will find much to learn from her approach to the interplay of institutions, networks, and practices, her empirical analysis challanges a number of assumptions that have both shaped approaches to the War on Terror and perhaps even undermined its effectiveness.”
“The highly topical nature of the research and subject matter clearly came at heavy personal price given that a white, Western foreigner was conducting interviews at the height of the War on Terror Afghanistan within Afghanistan.... Fortunately, her efforts have been richly rewarded given that this is a remarkable piece of work.”
Some of the paper trail · 2002–2026
On the record.
A few milestones from twenty-five years on the same problem — the books, the fieldwork behind them, and some of the places the work has been put on the record. Each has a document behind it; links follow as they become public.
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The Other Side of the Coin and the Archive Edition of Trust is the Coin of the Realm publishedISBNs 978-1-7648426-5-5 · -4-8 · -0-0 · -2-4This page
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The Trust is the Coin Papers, Nos. 1–3The three white papers, published as a seriesSeries
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Response to the FATF consultation on the draft Recommendation 16 guidanceSubmitted by Huozhi Ltd on behalf of the groupSubmission
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Three white papers accepted for inclusion in the official record of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee's oversight hearing on FinCENDemystifying Hawala · Verified Delivery · Payments Infrastructure Is a Front LineHearing page
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Verified payment corridors operated into Syria, Yemen and AfghanistanUnder the Amanacard name; the operating decade told in The Other Side of the CoinThe Other Side
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Team leader, Safer Corridors Rapid Assessment (Somalia–UK), commissioned by HM GovernmentThe study that documented what happens when transparency requirements outrun institutional capacityRead the report (PDF)
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Trust is the Coin of the Realm published by Oxford University PressThe peer-reviewed record of the fieldworkArchive Edition
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Three peer-reviewed papers on hawala“The Nexus of Drug Trafficking and Hawala in Afghanistan” (UNODC / World Bank, 2006) · “Misplaced Blame: Islam, Terrorism and the Origins of Hawala” (Max Planck Yearbook of United Nations Law, 2007) · “An Introduction to the Concept and Origins of Hawala” (Journal of the History of International Law, 2008)2006 2007 2008
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Doctoral fieldwork among Afghanistan's money dealersMiddle East, Afghanistan and PakistanArchive Edition
The author
Dr Edwina A. Thompson has followed money through war zones, natural disasters and remote communities for more than twenty years, proving what becomes possible when formal systems stop and people still have to move, decide and survive.
Her work began among Afghanistan's money dealers and later moved through field operations with governments, banks and humanitarian agencies, building ways to move money beyond the banking system.
She is founder and CEO of the Amanacard Group, which makes cash count in places banks have left behind.