Note Payable

Jean Baptiste Monge (artist)

Notes payable are legal instruments enabling persons in a barter economy to enable payment at a fixed or determinable future time, or on demand of the payee, under specific terms. In circumstances that require the payer to make restitution to a payee, or recipient, who has deposited goods into the payer's hands, the payer signs a note to redeem the entire value of the deposit. This "note" acts as a form of privately issued currency.

Barter Economies

The payee then presents the note to a third party, a creditor, in an agreed-upon village before an agreed-upon date. In places where these three parties engage with a bartering economy, namely a developed hex that possesses no coin symbol, then all three must be personally known to one another. The payer won't sign a note to a strange party, nor will the creditor validate that note.

The arrangement most commonly occurs with the delivery of farm produce to a garner or a carter post, where either carries no coin with which to remunerate the farmer. In turn, the farmer has no wish to be paid in coin that must be carried and kept at home, only to be then carried to a village market. Thus the farmer instead carries the note, which is remunerated in the village, which the farmer can then use to buy goods and services, which are then brought home, alleviating the farmer of ever having to carry money.

Likewise, a carter may pay a garner to carry away the goods in the garner's keeping; the garner then carries the carter's note the village in the same manner as the farmer.

Banking

In places where bank branches are found, notes payable serve as a means to transfer the request for sums between large cities where bank houses exist. Such notes are elaborate and often magically protected, to ensure their security.

See also, Coin (symbol) Debt