ABSTRACT
When the consumer whose shopping cart is overflowing stops at the cashier in an American supermarket, an all but ritual question is posed in a tone at once vacant and threatening: “CASH, CHECK, OR CHARGE?” The cashier, of course, wants to know by which of these three methods of payment the customer wishes to pay for his purchases: in banknotes, with a check, or with a credit card? The significance of this daily commercial ritual lies in the fact that the customer is confronted with a stereotypical question that repeats faithfully, in the sequence of possible means of payment, the historical order of different forms of monetary usage, from oldest to newest.
