May 29

May 29 Money, Money, Money

OK, today we are going to talk about something very dear to my heart - my wallet!! 😂
And the poor thing takes a hammering on here, I can tell you!! So many parties, security to pay for, TOT’s bar bill 😳!!!!

Now, what is it they say?! 😂

And there are lot more sayings to do with money.

Way back in prehistory, there was no form of currency. All trading would have been done with the barter system - swapping one form of goods or services directly for another.
At times, things like beads, jewels, or pieces of precious metals may have been swapped but these were not money as such, as they had other functions besides being a pure form of payment.
The first actual coins were made in the 5th or 6th centuries BC from electrum - a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver - and were hammered, that is formed by being struck by a hammer on an anvil. Scraps of metal were used so the coins were odd shapes.
In the 7th century, coins began to be made from pure silver or gold, and other technologies such as using a punch to make the coins or casting them started to be used.
Modern coins are made using electric or hydraulic presses and are uniform in appearance and weight for each denomination.

Gold, because it doesn’t tarnish and is easily worked, has been valued throughout human history.

Ancient silver coins come in all manner of shapes and sizes.

Banknotes - a promise to pay the bearer a certain sum on demand - are probably a lot older than you think!!
In China, promissory notes made from leather first appeared in 118 BC. Ancient Roman promissory notes were used in London in 57 AD. But Carthage was probably the first civilisation to use promissory notes, as records from the time mention leather or parchments ones being used in 146 BC.
The first official banknotes appeared in China in the 7th Century and were used to avoid the need to carry heavy copper coins everywhere. This practice spread to the Mongol Empire and the use of paper money began. Marco Polo brought the idea to Europe in the 13th Century and the first European banknotes appeared in Sweden in 1661.

Cheques are also an ancient, although less-used now, form of payment. A pre-runner first appeared in India in the 3rd Century BC and by the 3rd century AD, letters of credit were in common use by traders in Asia. And in the 13th Century, Europe began to use bills of exchange, which evolved into cheques by the 17th Century.
By 1770, the first bank clearing house was in use when all of the bank clerks used to meet every day at The Five Bells in Lombard Street to exchange all of their cheques and settle the balances due with cash. Cheques began to be personalised for customers in 1811, with chequebooks being introduced in 1850.
Cheque guarantee cards first appeared in 1969 and were used to confirm to a retailer that a cheque signed in front of him would be honoured. These were replaced by debit cards in the mid-1990s.

And now we come to that other poor abused piece of plastic - my credit card!!
The concept of credit actually stretches right back into history to when farmers could obtain goods, which were to be paid for when their harvests were gathered in. If you had borrowed against it, a harvest failure was going to lead to serious hardship in more ways than one.
The first store cards arrived in the early 20th Century and required the balance to be settled at the end of each month - what is known as a charge card. They were there more to promote customer loyalty - they could only be used at their own store - than to be any means of lending.
The first bank charge card, Charg-It, arrived in Brooklyn in 1946, closely followed by The Diner’s Club in 1950, and in 1958, American Express. 1958 was also when the first true credit card arrived - where the balance did not have to be repaid every month but could be carried over for a charge.
We now have chip and pin cards and contactless cards - that’s the one TOT seems to be able to wangle on mine!! - and now things like Apple Pay that only require a tap on your phone or watch to pay for purchases.
So many ways to pay!!