A brief history
of payments
In the beginning...
6000BCE
2000BCE
550BCE
In Mesopotamia, cale and grains were bartered for goods
and services.
Shell money and cowry shells were used as currency, but were
replaced by bronze and copper surrogates to extend intricate
trading networks in Africa, South Asia, and East Asia.
Salt gained popularity as currency because it was rare, making
the exchange rate equal ounce of salt for one ounce of gold in
the African-Roman trade networks.
FUN FACT
The word salary was derived from the Latin word
salarium, which linked employment to wages in salt.
Imagine buying a
$20,000 car today, with
18 ounces of table salt.
A penny for your thoughts?
100BCE
Coins became standardized in weight and value.
FUN FACT
The solidus was used in the Late Roman Empire, weighing 4.5 grams.
With today’s gold price, one solidus would be about $200.
Greenbacks, dead presidents,
and lots of cheddar
800
1290s
1660
The first banknotes were issued in China, but paper money
briefly stopped because printing costs drove inflation.
Paper money was introduced to Europe aer Marco Polo’s
return from East Asia.
Sweden was the first European nation to use paper money
but quickly saw increased fraud as fake credit notes were
exchanged for silver coins.
Americas: The dollar was adopted by the newly formed United
1780s
States. However, the independent United States still used an
assortment of currencies like official British coinage, Spanish
pesos, and certificates for tobacco.
Are you paying with
cash, credit or check?
1950s
American Express created a worldwide credit card network.
1960s
ATMs were created.
1970s
Debit cards were widespread.
1980s
Billions of checks were issued annually.
Credit card processing integrated into the soware of electronic
1990s
POS systems.
Debit card transactions first outnumbered the use of checks
around the world.
2000s
Mobile payments were born in Finland, where two mobile-phoneenabled Coca-Cola vending machines accepted payment via SMS
text messages.
Invented in the mid-90s, EMV becomes a widely adopted means of
fighting card-present fraud in the 2000s with smart-chip based cards
that store data on integrated circuits rather than magnetic stripes.
Virtual wallets introduced: Apple Pay, Google Wallet (Android Pay
is new version of Google Wallet), MasterPass and Visa Checkout.
Additional payment technologies introduced aimed at reducing
friction at the point of sale like PayPal, Amazon Payments, and
Venmo.
Bitcoin and other digital currencies available.