Reverse side of Banco di Sicilia Miniassegni
I recently came across a bunch of payment vouchers issued by various Italian banks in the 1970s. They only cost about EUR 2 each and a quick PayPal transaction soon made a Canadian collector and the Greek seller both very happy.
To be frank initially I had no clue what I bought. At first I thought they are called girate, as the word appears on the back of the payment vouchers, but my Dutch friend Michiel found out that "girate" means "endorsement" in Italian.
Subsequently Michiel found out that they're actually called "mini-assegni" or mini cashier's cheques. It turns out that in the 1970s, Italy had a massive shortage of small-denominaton lira coins. as the governement was not able to address the shortage, the Italian banking industry created their own small-denomination banknotes to circulate.
Needless to say, only the central bank Banca d'Italia was allowed to issue the Italian lira banknotes. In order to make the payment vouchers not "banknotes" and not illegal, the commercial banks made the vouchers look like cheques, by making the payments payable to a someone, which is why all the mini-assegni were made payable to some sort of Chamber of Commerce and Tourism. As some kind of cashier cheques, the Italian government and the Banca d'Italia could not press charges to the banks. In reality, perhaps the government was indifferent to thier existence anyway. The mini-assegni came in denominations of 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 Italian liras (lire).
In any case, while a real cheque is usually one-direction and for a single use (i.e. payment from the payer to the payee, and only used once), the mini-assegni were circulated back and forth between holders in society just like regular paper money. A total off 33 Italian banks issued them, each with its own designs. A total of 835 designs existed according to some expert. By 1978 finally the governement produced enough new small-denomination coinage that the need for the mini-assegni disappeared.
In Italian only:
Reverse side of Banco di Sicilia Miniassegni
I recently came across a bunch of payment vouchers issued by various Italian banks in the 1970s. They only cost about EUR 2 each and a quick PayPal transaction soon made a Canadian collector and the Greek seller both very happy.
To be frank initially I had no clue what I bought. At first I thought they are called girate, as the word appears on the back of the payment vouchers, but my Dutch friend Michiel found out that "girate" means "endorsement" in Italian.
Subsequently Michiel found out that they're actually called "mini-assegni" or mini cashier's cheques. It turns out that in the 1970s, Italy had a massive shortage of small-denominaton lira coins. as the governement was not able to address the shortage, the Italian banking industry created their own small-denomination banknotes to circulate.
Needless to say, only the central bank Banca d'Italia was allowed to issue the Italian lira banknotes. In order to make the payment vouchers not "banknotes" and not illegal, the commercial banks made the vouchers look like cheques, by making the payments payable to a someone, which is why all the mini-assegni were made payable to some sort of Chamber of Commerce and Tourism. As some kind of cashier cheques, the Italian government and the Banca d'Italia could not press charges to the banks. In reality, perhaps the government was indifferent to thier existence anyway. The mini-assegni came in denominations of 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300 and 350 Italian liras (lire).
In any case, while a real cheque is usually one-direction and for a single use (i.e. payment from the payer to the payee, and only used once), the mini-assegni were circulated back and forth between holders in society just like regular paper money. A total off 33 Italian banks issued them, each with its own designs. A total of 835 designs existed according to some expert. By 1978 finally the governement produced enough new small-denomination coinage that the need for the mini-assegni disappeared.
In Italian only: