Origins
It helps to recall that the term account refers to a record of transactions, whether current, past or future, and whether in money, or shares, or other countable commodities. Originally a bank account just meant the record kept by a banker of the money they were holding on behalf of a customer, and how that changed as the customer made deposits and withdrawals (the money itself probably being in the form of specie, such as gold and silver coin).
Some customers will keep their own records of their transactions, for instance, so they can check for errors by the bank. That record kept by the customer is also an account, of the money the bank is holding for them. When that customer is another bank, since they also keep other accounts (of the money they are holding for their customers) there is a need to clearly differentiate between these two types of accounts.
The terms nostro and vostro remove the potential ambiguity when referring to these two separate accounts of the same balance and set of transactions. Speaking from the bank's point-of-view:
- A nostro is our account of our money, held by you
- A vostro is your account of your money, held by us
Note that all "bank accounts" as the term is normally understood, including personal or corporate checking, loan, and savings accounts, are treated as vostros by the bank. They also regard as vostro purely internal funds such as treasury, trading and suspense accounts; although there is no "you" in the sense of an external customer, the money is still "held by us".
Read more about this topic: Nostro And Vostro Accounts
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
“Grown onto every inch of plate, except
Where the hinges let it move, were living things,
Barnacles, mussels, water weeds—and one
Blue bit of polished glass, glued there by time:
The origins of art.”
—Howard Moss (b. 1922)
“The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: “Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?””
—Katharine Hamnett (b. 1948)
“Compare the history of the novel to that of rock ‘n’ roll. Both started out a minority taste, became a mass taste, and then splintered into several subgenres. Both have been the typical cultural expressions of classes and epochs. Both started out aggressively fighting for their share of attention, novels attacking the drama, the tract, and the poem, rock attacking jazz and pop and rolling over classical music.”
—W. T. Lhamon, U.S. educator, critic. “Material Differences,” Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s, Smithsonian (1990)