History
In Holland in the early 1500s, Amsterdam was a major trading and shipping city. People who had acquired large accumulations of cash began to deposit their money with "cashiers" in order to protect their wealth. These cashiers held the money for a fee. Competition drove cashiers to offer additional services, including paying out money to any person bearing a written order from a depositor to do so. They kept the note as proof of payment.
This idea spread to other countries including England and the English colonies in North America, where land owners in Boston in 1681 mortgaged their land to cashiers who provided an account against which they could write checks.
In the eighteenth century in England, preprinted checks, serial numbers, and the very word "cheque" appeared. By the late eighteenth century, the difficulty of clearing checks (sending them from one bank to another for collection) gave rise to the development of clearing houses.
Read more about this topic: Transactional Account
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The custard is setting; meanwhile
I not only have my own history to worry about
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—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The history of American politics is littered with bodies of people who took so pure a position that they had no clout at all.”
—Ben C. Bradlee (b. 1921)