2 Payment Systems Survey. This chapter provides a concise history of various payment systems—barter, coins, drafts, and notes—and how drafts and notes became paper money and evolved to fiat money. Checks, wire transfers, automated clearing houses, and global funds-transfer systems | 2 Payment Systems Survey This chapter provides a concise history of various payment systems barter coins drafts and notes and how drafts and notes became paper money and evolved to fiat money. Checks wire transfers automated clearing houses and global funds-transfer systems the principal payment systems in use today are covered in separate chapters in this book. Chapter 8 discusses the management of corporate payment systems risk. BARTER Ancient commerce used barter the exchange of one kind of goods for another for example one bushel of wheat for a cow. In many locales barter was replaced by a specific measure of a commodity as the medium of exchange. For instance the ancient Israelites paid for goods with cattle. 7 Payment Systems Survey COINS Historically the use of specific measures of precious metals replaced most bartering of commodities with ingots and then coins coming into use. The issuance of Assyrian silver pieces at about 700 . is an early example of a government issuing an official currency. The Greek city-states and then the Persian Alexandrian and Roman Empires developed and improved the system of precious-metal-based official currency. By the late Middle Ages the payment system in Europe was based on precious metal coins minted by powerful rulers or municipalities. PAPER MONEY The use of bills and notes avoids the problem of debasement. Bills of exchange now called drafts and promissory notes issued by depositories of precious metals in England evolved into paper money. Drafts Become Paper Money Metal coins are portable but heavy. In late medieval and Renaissance Europe the short supply and bulky weight of coins impeded the growing transnational trade among merchants and could not provide the larger transactional amounts required. The merchants invented the bill of exchange today called a draft. As a medium of payment these paper bills of exchange were easily portable and a highly satisfactory solution to the problem of robbery. Bills of exchange
