The Time Capsule Of Money — A Journey From Barter To Modern Banking

Banking is as old as our civilization and money does not hold any value in itself, it is defined by those who control it!

Decoding the history of monetary transactions, this article will map out the various steps taken by humankind in making monetary affiliations better and user-friendly.

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Ever since a social structure came into existence, the need to make financial transactions came along as well. From food to shelter and protection, everything comes with a price tag, for which, in ancient times, a transfer of goods or valued assets became mandatory.

Indeed, the modes were different back then, archaic to be more factual, but such an exchange of an existing asset for another solved the purpose of making the ends meet.

Apart from easing up these concerns, these socio-economic structures of investment, lending and banking paved and defined the path of human development right from the primitive stages to the highly sorted system that we have today.

We have dealt with unregulated lenders and loan sharks that leeched us of our financial prosperity. We’ve seen those days when in the name of saving money, we locked away our hard-earned money in deedboxes and coffers, but then things changed for good, became organized in ways more than imagined and by now we are living in a financial space that recognizes and provides for all our economic needs and desires.

From barter systems to paper currency and now the digital lending and wallet utilities, our monetary systems have evolved on a tremendous scale and satisfied every end of its users, making it super convenient and fun.

So let’s revise those chapters of our financial past and let’s shed some light on how have we, as the most intelligent life form on the planet, made it through the very many stages and challenges that came down our way in the history of finance and monetary transactions.

The Elementary Phase

Around 3000 years ago, the concept of money and transacting it in exchange for goods wasn’t in practice. People would just contribute to their community and relied on the mercy of nature for the rest. But soon after, a primitive solution surfaced, something we know as barter nowadays!

People would exchange goods & services for things they needed and often for those that hardly mattered and weren’t as useful to them as well.

But with a slow pace of events, this culture of bartering became more precise to the needs and requirements. People understood that only the one who needs something from you can be approached for such transactions. Only life essentials that meant more than anything to one and all in the society can be held valuable for barter, and finally, an intelligent and reliable system of worthy transactions came into existence.

The wheel had started to roll and things proceeded with a slow yet constant chain of events.

And when the concept was ready to be accepted widely, the need for reforms came ahead. In no time, people understood that bartering wasn’t completely justified and suitable for all kinds of transactions and monetary needs. Someone with more essential goods would hold more power over many and the rest of us who had lesser resources were left out of the loop. The gap was perceivable, a gap that only an upgrade to the existing system could fill. An upgrade that was introduced in the form of a governed currency.

The Age Of Currency

The world needed a model that was common for all, governed by authorities & regulated by value. And to satiate the need, the first signs of currencies came into play.

In various parts of the world, seals, coins and other valuable metals served the purposes, whereas written formats undersigned by people in power made for a currency in the rest. Ultimately, the entire framework was to generalize and control the flow of transactional value and things that could be exchanged for goods and services.

This was a milestone in the evolution of our world’s economic folio and welcomed new ways of saving, investing and aggregating to one’s wealth.

Now that there was a charter for transactions, there was a ledger that made account of the currency in circulation, its value could be determined and controlled by the authorities in place.

People who had it in surplus could lend it to the ones who needed without the fear of losing ownership and those who lacked in this wealth had a way around making things easier to survive. A proper currency had made a drastic change in the way people lived. Rather, it made life easier for the masses across the globe.

Only for the time being though, as not much later, the system went obsolete for the increased number of users and needed external intervention.

The fundamentals remained the same, but the process got tuned up with a mechanized approach and technological support.

The Need For Mechanization & A New Dawn

To cope with the technological advancements, the surge in population across the globe & a need to ease up the pressure on the existing monetary transactional process, a new and even more efficient process was formed.

People looking forward to investing their stagnant wealth on a smaller scale needed a fool-proof system to help them recover these funds efficiently.

For which, there were specialist banks and investment firms set up, yet by the end of the 20th century, a digital transformation completely changed the way things worked in the financial world. With major digitization in lending and financial transactions, the term “Fintech” took charge of human intervention in the process, bringing the possibility of errors and discrepancies to a bare minimum.

A new dawn of digital transactions upscaled the entire system to new heights and within the first decade of the 21st century, the entire monetary system had evolved to a state of the art digital platform for lending, investing and transacting money.

Cryptocurrencies made way to the economies across the globe, digital wallets replaced banking needs, and electronic devices and applications made for the liquid monetary needs. Nowadays, almost every corner of the world is economically connected with a digital stream of technology, making things faster than even a blink of an eye.

Digital lending and online banking are the new faces of monetary transactions in the world. Which is safer, faster and efficient in comparison to what we resorted to in the past.

Gone are those days when one had to follow the standard, time-consuming and less user-friendly banking procedures. People don’t have to suffer in long queues to transfer and withdraw funds anymore. From investing, redirecting and transferring wealth to making all sorts of financial decisions, everything is available with just a click on your smart-phone.

Banking applications and digital wallets have revolutionalized the way we take up monetary transactions. We don’t need to carry wads of cash or cards while traveling or while making huge purchases anymore.

Complementing it all, we have a better understanding of the banking culture on a broader scale. Given the amount of convenience provided in the process, we use it more often and it is widely accepted by the masses.

Conclusively, money does not hold any value in itself, it is defined by those who control it. True, but the journey to this point of conveniently handling & processing it has been difficult, long and transforming, yet the fruits to bear are equally worthy. From being a mode of exchange in the barter age to a currency that was defined and controlled for all to now, when digital modes have made economic transfers more efficient and easier than ever, the monetary world has seen it all, covered the lengths and has now become a utility that makes life easier.

But the question remains, what next, what will the future bring along?

DO YOU HAVE THE ANSWERS!