The business barter sector has many federations already because this is the business model of the software providers.
Typically one software is sold to as many exchanges as possible and the vendor takes a dollar commission from each inter-exchange transactions, which seems inappropriate because no dollars change hands and also disincentivises exchange, more so if the fee is high.
This model of federation serves the software providers more than the traders because it carves up the marketplace, keeping traders separate according to their exchange’s software choice. In this way of thinking, members are property to be owned, before they are customers to be served!
This way also causes problems because the software providers assume that each exchanges barter dollars are worth the same without checking the integrity of the exchanges, which all to often are suffering from a profligate house account.
The International Reciprocal Trade Organisation sought to improve the situation by introducing another currency governed by itself, called Universal Currency. The system is its own platform and thus members have the experience of being in two exchanges and using two currencies. In 2014 the system ran into liquidity problems and fraud allegations followed. The system has now been rebooted in partnership with Bartercard, but it is not clear that the governance problems were addressed.