Supporters of upending Switzerland's financial system have made an appeal to voters to approve a proposal to strip banks of the power to create new money through lending, reports Reuters.
Postal voting, which accounts for the majority of participation in Swiss referenda, is underway in so-called Sovereign Money initiative, with the polls closing on Sunday.
Most money in the world is not produced by central banks but is instead created by commercial lenders when they lend beyond the deposits they hold for savers.
This arrangement has been a cornerstone of the global capitalist system but opponents say it is unstable because the new money created exceeds economic growth.
Swiss campaigners want to replace this approach, where banks regularly roll over their financing of loans, with a system of "Vollgeld".
Vollgeld can be translated to "real money".
"A large majority of people in Switzerland don't want commercial banks to produce money out of nothing," Raffael Wuethrich, one of the campaign's leaders, said.
"They (people) believe only the SNB should have the right to create money in Switzerland - this is their chance to make this happen," said Wuethrich.
The Sovereign Money initiative would allow banks only to give credit to customers using funds they have from long term customer deposits, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) or money markets.
"Our opponents have tried to make people afraid and insecure about our plans, but when people find these fears are unfounded they are coming over to our side," Wuethrich said.
If the Swiss vote 'yes', the law introducing 'real money' would be written into the country's constitution.
It would then fall to the government to work out how to introduce it within three years.
The referendum is in part the result of growing frustration in traditionally banker-friendly Switzerland with the financial sector, after the government bailed out the country's biggest lender UBS in 2008.
This has opened the way for a vote which could turn back the clock 100 years to when the SNB created most of the money used in the country.
"The banks have too much influence in Switzerland," said Julian Baecker, a post-graduate student.
"They have a lot of power without responsibilities. For example, the taxpayer had to pay for their mistakes during the financial crisis," she said.
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