SomersetBen on Nostr: For the younger members of the Nostr community… A cheque was a specific form of ...

For the younger members of the Nostr community…

A cheque was a specific form of paper on which you could request your bank to transfer funds to another person’s account.

You would complete the form with the person’s name, the amount to transfer (in both text and numbers), the date and your signature. You would then hand the form to the recipient who would give it to their bank with another piece of paper specifying their account and confirming the amount. Their bank would pass the cheque to your bank which would confirm the correct completion of the form (amount in text and numbers matched, valid date, sufficient funds and valid signature) before replying to the recipient’s bank to confirm the transaction. This process would take about five working days (not elapsed days).

The reason for writing the date on the next few cheques to be written was that one often wrote last year’s date “on autopilot”, effectively dating cheques over a year ago. Cheques dated more than three months in the past were invalid. Aaaargh!!

Thank goodness for #Bitcoin and the #Lightning network.