The Medicis of Italy innovated 'bills of exchange,' precursors to checks

The idea of a check—or promissory note—goes back to antiquity

As long as traders have looked to pay in cash or coin, the idea of an IOU has been close behind. Clay tablets from ancient Mesopotamia (roughly modern Iraq) and Persia (Iran) suggest proto-checks were used at the time. Islamic traders innovated "sakks" in the 9th century, leading to the broader adoption during the Middle Ages in Europe.

How banking works

To do big things, people often need more money. Banks jumpstart economic activity with loans paid back with interest, and when things are working well, both people and the bank make more money. Formed in the Middle Ages amid competing currencies in Italy, banks—from the Italian for bench, banco—helped stimulate that era's commercial revolution, a massive expansion in Mediterranean trade and development. Find out the ins and outs of banks in this quick explainer video.

From bartering to banking, temples to electronic transactions, here’s banking has evolved significantly since ancient times

A few historical facts about banking (like that one day, not long ago, certificates of deposit were physical pieces of paper) may not surprise you. But did you know that the church was the original lender? And that Julius Caesar himself invented foreclosure?

London bankers created the first clearinghouse to process checks in 1770

Until that time, each banker was required to bring that day's checks to every other bank for settlement. Perhaps understandably, the first place bankers opted to gather to clear and settle checks was a tavern known as the Five Bells. The innovation gave rise to what would become clearinghouses, key institutions that facilitate payments.

The Bank of America began as the Bank of Italy—one of the first US banks for the middle class—and loaned money to individuals to help rebuild after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake.

Before the modern banking system, most lending resembled private credit

Before the creation of the modern banking system, the majority of loans were negotiated directly between the lender and the borrower—effectively making them private credit transactions.

The bond market dates back to the 1100s in Venice

In the early 1800s, bonds were used to fund US railroads and canals in Great Britain. “Liberty Bonds” were sold during both World Wars in the 20th century. Learning about the early and modern history of bonds can offer a glimpse into how the modern bond market came to be.

Benjamin Franklin advocated for the use of paper money and even engineered some key anticounterfeiting techniques used today.

Money—not land—became Europe’s key economic driver in the Middle Age

During the medieval commercial revolution, money gradually replaced land as the primary economic commodity. Expanding trade, markets, and finance transformed Europe’s economy—laying foundations, historians argue, that were essential for the later Industrial Revolution.

American Express is credited with inventing the traveler's check

In the 1890s, then American Express President James C. Fargo was frustrated that he couldn't get cash while traveling in Europe outside of major cities. Marcellus Berry, an American Express employee, came up with the idea of a traveler's "cheque": a prepaid check, similar to cash, that requires the signature of both the customer and the receiving institution to be valid. American Express never modernized the spelling of the word "cheque" and stopped providing them at the end of 2020.

How ancient Romans invested and worked

The first stock exchange didn't open for business until the early 1600s, but that didn't stop the Ancient Romans from working and investing their money centuries before. While Romans are better known for their political inventions than their economic ones, understanding how they viewed money can help paint a better picture of the Roman mindset that created systems like democracy. Read this article to learn more.

The United States had a washing machine that cleaned dirty dollar bills

In the early 1900s, the US Treasury Department had a machine that washed and ironed old, soiled paper bills. The machine helped the Treasury save money by decreasing printing costs for new dollar bills, but had nothing to do with the modern understanding of money laundering.

The Middle Ages produced inventions that still affect our lives today, like coffee houses and improved agricultural techniques.

Thomas and Anne Rogers were famous counterfeiters in 17th-century England

The pair used a practice called “coin clipping,” shaving the edges off silver coins to decrease their weight before sending them back into circulation. When banknotes rather than coins gained popularity, counterfeiting methods evolved—in the 1700s, an early banknote counterfeiter named Mary Butterworth created counterfeit paper money using starched cloth and a hot iron to transfer the pattern of a banknote onto paper.

The US has used a wide variety of different currencies between the 1690s and today

From colonial money to national banknotes, people have used all kinds of forms of currency throughout the history of the United States before settling on the dollar bills and quarters that we pay for things with today.

The concept of life insurance likely originated in ancient Rome around the year 100 BCE

However, life insurance policies didn’t reach the Americas until 1759, when life insurance started being used to protect the families of Protestant ministers when said ministers died. This timeline of life insurance’s early history—and how it has evolved since then—provides more details.

The history of student loans can be traced back as far as the 1400s.

The concept of CDs dates back to the 1600s in Europe

Banks in the US started issuing CDs in the early 1800s as the banking system began to take shape following the Revolutionary War. The federal government did not formally insure CDs until the FDIC was formed in 1933.

Congress banned banks from paying checking account interest for 80 years

Known as "Regulation Q," the act sought to stop bank competition for customers involving increasing interest rates in the 1930s. This competition led banks to make reckless investment decisions to pay higher interest rates. During the ban, banks competed by focusing on convenience (ATMs, branches), relying on fees, and building relationships.

Credit reporting's earliest origins in the 1700s resemble a game of telephone, with rural merchants asking their most esteemed neighbors to vouch for them to sleuthing urban lenders.

Colonial Americans used tobacco, wampum, and land-backed notes to solve a chronic coin shortage

British coins rarely circulated in the colonies due to an unfavorable trade balance, forcing colonists to improvise. They traded in Spanish dollars, Native American shells, tobacco warehouse receipts, and eventually paper money backed by land rather than gold.

How Byzantine scholars supercharged Renaissance Italy

A brief survey of how Byzantine scholars changed the course of the Renaissance by introducing Classical Greek literature to Italy. These scholars and their students were responsible for translating, interpreting, and printing many of the most fundamental texts in the Western tradition. Without their efforts, the Italian Renaissance and Western thought would have been immeasurably poorer.

Europe’s first universities emerged from medieval church school

The modern university can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when schools in Italy, France, and England initially trained clergy before expanding to include lay students. By the 10th and 11th centuries, they taught law, medicine, and theology across Europe.

Medieval hospitals existed centuries before modern medicine

Long before modern healthcare, medieval Europe established hospitals that served multiple roles, including religious, social, and medical purposes. This podcast explores how institutions like Siena's Ospedale di Santa Maria della Scala supported urban and rural communities for centuries.

Before the US Mint, people made currency in private mints

Around the year 1652, New England coinage was created at private mints. Historically, private mints were often located in places where governments did not meet the demand for currency. This article dives into the history of private mints, including the ones people can still visit today.

Visualizing the history of money

Money is any medium of exchange used in payments for goods or services and can take many forms. From cattle and shells in ancient times to paper and blockchain today, money has taken many shapes and sizes. This infographic illustrates some of the major forms of exchange world cultures have used over the last 5,000 years.

The origin and history of stock exchanges

When were stocks first sold? Though debt was first sold in Venice in the 14th century, stocks proper began in the Netherlands. To fund its spice trade across the world in 1602, the Dutch East India Company sold stocks to individual investors, a novel approach to raising funds. It was the Dutch West India Company that founded New York—the site of some of the world’s greatest stock exchanges. Listen to a concise historical overview here.

The term ‘mortgage’ was born out of the French word for ‘dead pledge’

Borrowing money to buy a house has been a global practice since the Romans in the fifth century BCE. But before the mortgage, there was the “dead pledge,” which labeled the property as “dead” to the borrower until they paid off their loan to the lender.

Visualize the 5,000-year history of consumer credit in one infographic

Consumer loans for agriculture were likely first used around 3500 BCE, but modern consumer credit took many more centuries to be established. England's credit reporting system, for instance, dates back to the early 1800s when a group of English tailors began swapping information about customers who failed to settle their debts.

Congress mandated that the Fed streamline check payments

When it was first created in the 1910s, the Federal Reserve System became a crucial link between the nation's regional banks. The increasing number of checks used by the thousands of banks across the nation required a central operator, and the Fed was uniquely positioned to help. Learn more about the role the Fed played in the history of checks.

During the Civil War, the US government printed paper money for the first time

Those original paper bills were called “greenbacks” or “demand notes.” Since then, paper money has evolved with different designs, names, and values. Today, it is solely issued by the Bureau of Engraving & Printing.

Ancient Romans helped develop modern cheese production techniques

The ancient Romans loved cheese and experimented with different processes to elevate its flavor, like aging. Some of their innovations, like Pecorino Romano, you can still find today. Others, like the smoked goat-milk Caseus, we only know about through historical records.

The word 'mortgage' comes from medieval French, meaning 'death contract.'

The Middle Ages, the roughly 1,000-year period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance, shaped the political and cultural foundations of modern Europe.

A mysterious man named Emmerich Juettner once produced thousands of counterfeit $1 bills

After his wife died in 1937, Juettner fell into financial trouble and soon began replicating $1 bills. These bills aren’t typically prime targets for counterfeiting given their low value.

A gold standard is a system where every dollar in circulation can be exchanged for a set amount of gold

For centuries, the things people used as money had intrinsic value, such as precious metals like gold. In medieval Italy, giant wheels of parmesan cheese were once used as a store of value.

In 1882, American Express began offering money orders to compete with the US Postal Service

Money orders were American Express' first move into financial services. USPS launched its money order service in 1864 as a way for Civil War soldiers to send money back home. Between the 1880s and 1920s, immigration into the United States surged;the American Express money order service gave immigrants a way to send money to family members living in other countries.

The first commercially successful calculating machine—the arithmometer—was patented in 1820 but not mass-produced for over three decades, likely because its inventor was focused on his insurance business.

A medieval Italian visits Constantinople

In the tenth century, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto I sent Liudprand of Cremona, an Italian bishop, to Constantinople on a diplomatic mission. He was not successful. But the very undiplomatic report he sent back to the emperor about his experiences provides a unique – and often very entertaining – look at life and ceremony in the Byzantine capital, dramatically different from anything in Liudprand’s Italy.

The history of credit cards begins with the 'Fresno Drop.'

On a 1958 morning in Fresno, California, about 60,000 people woke up to find a strange rectangular piece of plastic on their doorstep without explanation. Those chosen for the "Fresno Drop" didn't know it yet, but Bank of America was behind the credit card delivery stunt.

Pre-coin currencies like shells were subject to counterfeiting

While it is difficult to pinpoint the very earliest form of money that was used, a type of shell called cowrie shells were used as currency as far back as 3300–2000 BCE. These shells were imitated using ivory, bone, clam shells and more.

There's a myth that Al Capone coined the term 'money laundering,' or the process of disguising the criminal origins of illegally obtained money so it can be used without detection.

Governments have historically used counterfeiting for economic warfare

Inserting fake currency into an economy can help destabilize it. During the American Revolution, for instance, the British distributed counterfeit “Continental Dollars” in an effort to devalue the currency being used in the US at the time with the goal of undermining America’s growing financial credibility. The Nazis also ran an extensive counterfeiting scheme during WWII.

The namesake of the Ponzi Scheme, Charles Ponzi made an estimated $15M from running a fake international arbitrage scheme in the 1920s.

'Usury' is the act of lending money at an excessively high interest rate

Laws regulating predatory lending are called usury laws and vary from state to state. Payday lending has historically been exempt from some states' usury laws, and some lenders have found loopholes in state laws or business structures that allow them to provide short-term loans with high interest rates.

See a collection of ancient Roman coins used on the Silk Roads

As ancient Rome's appetite for eastern luxuries grew, long-distance trade routes linking the Mediterranean to Asia emerged along what became known as the Silk Road. Without shared language or legal systems, merchants could use the reliable Roman coins to exchange with other cultures. This exhibit features gold and silver pieces bearing the portraits of emperors and Latin inscriptions.

A history of stock exchanges, from Venitain merchants to modern day

While the idea of stock exchanges—markets where securities can be bought and sold—is mostly synonymous with Wall Street, the New York Stock Exchange, and other modern markets, places to buy and sell financial instruments have a long history....

The New York Stock Exchange wouldn't have been made if not for municipal bond sales

The Funding Act of 1790 nationalized and consolidated the debt held by the 13 colonies to be sold off in the form of bonds.

There have been many versions of US banknotes throughout history

From the Civil War to the present day, the US has gone through many, many versions of paper money (or “notes”). Some notes, like “demand notes,” were created to finance the Civil War. Others, like “treasury notes,” helped pay for silver.

Benjamin Franklin founded America's first lending library, the Library Company of Philadelphia, in 1731.