tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6704573462403312459.post2685043967558784651..comments2024-03-19T04:32:14.899-04:00Comments on Moneyness: The unbanked, the post office, and fintech in the 1880sJP Koninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02559687323828006535noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6704573462403312459.post-43533378370270910192021-03-06T14:09:01.440-05:002021-03-06T14:09:01.440-05:00Probably by numbering the books and the cheques, a...Probably by numbering the books and the cheques, and maintaining the account at the book level, not the user level. And sale or return would probably help here.<br /><br />Result is, buy a book of cheques for £20, write £19 worth of cheques, and use the very last cheque in the book to cash for the remaining quid.Ducky McDuckfacenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6704573462403312459.post-4528507324776876412021-01-01T15:55:03.490-05:002021-01-01T15:55:03.490-05:00Anon, you make a good point and unfortunately I ha...Anon, you make a good point and unfortunately I haven't been able to find enough information to be able to explain how this precisely worked. <br /><br />Prescott writes that:<br /><br />"The Cheque Bank would maintain two balances for each account, the amount in the account, and the amount of credit extended by the checks. When a check was paid, both balances would be adjusted" - https://twitter.com/jp_koning/status/1344741296930500609<br /><br />So somehow the Bank was keeping track of each user's balance such that if the user wrote out a 4 pound payment order on a 5 pound cheque and thus had 1 pound left over, they were still entitled to the remaining amount. Mind you, if customers were buying cheques at a local stationer (which Jevons claims), then I'm not sure how this information was collected. JP Koninghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02559687323828006535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6704573462403312459.post-61137920490992737102020-12-31T18:17:42.540-05:002020-12-31T18:17:42.540-05:00I'm not quite sure I follow how you got your m...I'm not quite sure I follow how you got your money back as the person who bought the cheques, but then wrote one for less than the maximum amount on the check. Did the drug store take down your name for the company? If people routinely wrote checks for less than the maximum amount, but had to put down the maximum amount they might not have been as cheap as you might think given the foregone interest on the deposit (though if you can't make a deposit at a bank, that particular use of the money would obviously have been hard to come by). You describe it as "Anyone could buy a book of Cheque Bank cheques at a stationer or cigar store, the Cheque Bank redepositing the cash it received with its bankers." which again a book rather than one sounds like more expensive in terms of foregone uses for a larger sum of money. At any rate, this was fascinating but I don't follow how they did the accounting when the amount written was less than the maximum and wonder whether like PayPal the costs were more hidden. Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com