Types of money

Types
The most familiar form of money are coins and banknotes, also known as cash. Much of the money stored in a bank exists not as notes, but as data stored in computers. To spend it, people use cheques and plastic cards.
Coins
The first coins were made in Lydia, Turkey, 600BC. Early coins were made of precious metal. Today, they are sure likely to be made of a common metal, like aluminium.
Cheque
A cheque is written instruction to a bank to pay money to someone. For security reasons, cheques are often unusuable without identification, such as a cheque guarantee card.
Banknotes
They may be only pieces of paper, but banknotes are accepted as valuable because of the sum they represent. Banknotes first appeared in China in the 11th century, and in Europe six centuries later.
Credit card
With a credit card, a person can buy something and pay for it later. The cards are issued by banks, credit companies, and large stores, and can be used in most shops. Each month the company sends a total bill to the cardholder.
Cardholder must repay the debt promptly, or will owe interest (extra money) on the balance.

Banks

Banks
Most people store their money with a bank, which keeps an account of how much each customer deposits. People gain access to their money through cash medicines, counter transactions, or by writing cheques. Banks may provide interest when a certain amount of money is kept in the account, but will charge customers who borrow money. Banks also provide financial services, such as pensions and insurance policies.

Early banks
Banks were set up about 3,000 to 4,000 years ago in Babylon as a secure place for customer’s money. By 600BC, there were banks in china, later in ancient Rome, bank offered investment and foreign exchange services.
Banking declined in medieval Europe because the church disapproved of money-lending for profit. But in the 15th and 16th centuries, important bank were set up in a Italy, providing financial services all over the Mediterranean.
How a high street bank works
They have branches in main towns. Cashiers serve customers through toughened glass panels. They have cash cheques, using money kept in fills beneath the counter, and inform customers about their accounts, using a terminal connected to the bank’s central computer. Customers can also buy foreign currency for trips overseas. Most of the money is kept in vaults with massive steel doors.
Pricelist
The clay tablet contains a price list written in Mesopotamia in the 19th century BC. It expresses prices interms of shekels and minas, the standard weight of the time. One shekel of silver would buy twelve mina of wool, ten mina of bronze, three measure of barley, or three measures of sesame oil.
Making banknotes
To reduce the chance of forgery, the process of making banknotes is shrouded in secrecy and production is made as complicate as possible. This is why the design includes so many fine detracts hardly noticeable at first glance, and why special inks and papers, not used in ordinary printing are involved.