ABSTRACT

Prior to the period of capitalism the activity of a bank consisted primarily, wherever a plurality of kinds of money were in circulation, in the business of exchanging money. Furthermore, the function of providing for the safekeeping of money, or deposit business, belongs to the very oldest of banking operations. Thus in the pre-capitalistic age the banks transacted a deposit business with transfer or assignment of credits for the elimination of cash payments. Peculiar to Babylon was the development out of the deposit business of the role of the banker as a lender of credit. The functions of the banks in India and China today still consist essentially of the business of making payments and small or occasional credit operations. The native Asiatic commerce knows only checks and payment assignments of the most various sorts, but not the bill of exchange.