Moving money was one of the first issues to be solved by medieval financiers, through the invention of a cashless credit transfer system that operated on so-called bills of exchange. These were, to use a crude analogy, medieval travelers’ checks: they promised to pay the bearer a fixed sum of money at a destination far from their place of issue, and often in a different currency. The Templars had pioneered their use in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, creating chits that allowed pilgrims traveling to the east to borrow against their properties and assets at home and withdraw their funds
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