The competition between countries often led to currency wars, where competing countries would try to change the value of the competitor's
currency by driving it up and making the enemy's goods too expensive, by driving it down and reducing the enemy's buying power, or by
eliminating the currency completely.
Cheques are a type of bill of exchange that were developed as a way to make payments without the need to carry large amounts of money. Paper money evolved from promissory notes; another form of negotiable instrument similar to cheques in that they were originally a written order to pay the given amount to whoever had it in their possession.
Cheques are basically the direct descendant of the original paper money issued by the banks.
The first recorded credit card of sorts was identified in ancient Mesopotamia, when that civilization’s people used clay tablets to trade with its neighbors.
The first clear precursor of the credit card, as we know it, was the ‘Charga-Plate’, a two and half inch by one and a quarter inch rectangular sheet of metal, not unlike a military ‘dog tag’ that came into circulation in the early 1930s.
Diners Club Card was invented in 1957 one year
after Frank McNamara forgot his wallet at home
and had to use his wife’s money to pay for dinner.
1959 American Express introduces the first plastic card followed by the Bank of America and Diners Club in 1960.
Ron Klein an IBM Engineer invented magnetic stripe that’s used to store the customer’s information on the card. His wife gave him the idea to iron it on the card.
1968 two German engineers Jürgen Dethloff and
Helmut Gröttrup patented the incorporation of a
silicon integrated circuit chip into a plastic. It took
a while though until the first cards with the chip
were introduced in 1986.
The introduction of a smartphone and the rise of the smartphone adoption gave boost to a novel form of payment activated with the touch of your finger.
This form of payment first came to prominence in Asia and Europe before moving over to North America. From payments via text message, the technology evolved to allow checks to be deposited using the camera app on smart devices.
Mobile payment services like Apple Pay and Google Pay are vying for retailers to accept their platforms for point-of-sale payments. There are