Ancestral Checks Emerge from the Primordial Ooze

There's some argument about when the first checks materialized from the fiscal chaos of the evolving financial world. Some pundits point to evidence that something like checks were in use by those great adopters, the Romans, before the year 350 B.C. It's even possible that it happened earlier, way back in Mesopotamia, when clay tablets were the height of literary technology. If that's so, it's no wonder checks didn't catch on then. Carrying around a baked clay check had to be worse than carrying around a bunch of heavy coins. After all, how would you fold it and put it into your wallet?

The first real checks didn't make their appearance until just about 400 years ago (officially, 1608). Dutch citizens with too much money on their hands (what a problem) had already been depositing it in newfangled businesses called "banks" for over a hundred years, or bringing it to individuals called "cashiers," who were happy to store the extra cash for a small fee. Eventually, Dutch cashiers and banks started letting their depositors pay their debts directly from their stored funds. Depositors did this by issuing handwritten "cash letters" to their creditors. Basically, a cash letter was a brief message from the payor instructing the bank to let the recipient have some money from his bank account (sound familiar?). No longer did you have to take bulky coins or currency from one place and transfer it to another; now you could do it with a slip of paper.

And so a whole new financial system was born. It took a little time to catch on, but within a century it was used in every industrialized nation in the world. By the late 1600s, even the American Colonies were getting in on the act.

On to What a Check Is, Exactly .. Back