ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that the legal concept of money ought to be an essential research subject in commercial law, but money has hardly concerned lawyers since the beginning of the twentieth century, much in contrast to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It discusses the concept of dematerialised property and its major applications for analytical examination: company shares, debts and money as a special form of debt. The money order rather extinguishes the credit with the transferor and creates the equivalent credit with the transferee, usually held at a different bank. A modern broad definition of money has been provided by the Supreme Court of Canada: In ordinary speech, bank credit implies a credit which is convertible into money. But money as commonly understood is not necessarily legal tender. Since money is a form of debt, money is credit – ‘credit’ only denotes the perspective of the creditor in relation to the obligation.
