Letter of Credit

Kresslack

You want to pay someone, but you don't often see them, or you don't want to be seen with them, and they don't have a bank account. You could mail them the gold in a letter, but that's not very practical. Besides, you've no way of knowing who's reading your mail, and who's peeking into that letter that jingles with the distinct melody of golden sovereigns.

What if, however, delivery of such a coveted commodity could be easily accommodated by the banks themselves? Moreover, they would guarantee safe and full delivery, because they're getting a small fee, similar to that of transferring between accounts. Money still has to be moved from one bank to the other; this is simply a different capacity and an added service to their loyal customers, while offering incentive to new customers.

This adds an additional capacity of allowing organizations to quickly and efficiently dispatch funds to individuals for services rendered or contracted, without having to go through the motions of withdrawing the gold, putting it in a letter, and then sending it out.

It would like like so:

You go to a bank. 

Assuming you have an account (new or current) with funds stored in that branch, you can TRANSFER <amount> <person> AS CREDIT |<optional memo>(Sexual Favours is always a good one).

The bank will ensure you've enough in your account to cover the amount requested, and their modest fee. Assuming you're not a beggar trying to scam them, and everything checks out, they'll dispatch a courier with a letter of credit for the amount requested to the person listed.

The letter of credit will advise the amount, whom it's from, an optional memo, and from which bank it was issued. 

The recipient can then go to any bank, such as the one they mainly use, for instance. They would then EXCHANGE CREDIT FOR GOLD, which is payed out by that branch. Not to worry about them losing money! They'll receive a transfer from the issuing bank to cover the amount they've just given you; so it's all Kosher and no one has to die in a dark alley. 

Thoughts?

Trey

I've always liked the idea of carrying promissary notes (pieces of paper that the bank took a fee for issuing, but don't drop from your inventory like gold). I'd rather have something like notes rather than just a secondary system, which besides, exists already. You'd just need to add the ability for orgs to transfer to single people.

BANK TRANSFER amount GOLD TO person bank

   Stand in the bank where your gold is. Moves money between your two

   accounts. E.g. BANK TRANSFER 1000 GOLD TO ELENTARI HASHAN.

Nim

I love cheques, please add them.

It'd be cool if they had to be cashed in and everything too. Bonus points if you could use them in shops but that'd be a pain with the current buy-a-single-item-at-a-time system.

At-bank transferring should definitely be possible too, even without a cheque on hand.

Xith

I was hoping this was gonna be a loan system proposal.
I did a credit loan once and the person paid back almost half of it before pretending that the original owner of the account died and gave the password to their brother.

Should put in a loan system so that when people don't pay back loans on time they get hunted by NPC assassins til they do.
EDIT: Yes, I used to be a debt collector IRL.