Fistful of Dollars: The Economy of Frontier
I'm back! And, as promised, I have bits and pieces for you.
As the topic indicates, this is a partial treatment of the Frontier economy. For reference, the Federales are what I've previously referred to as the Government; the Interstitium is the "official" term for the period since the Federal starships stopped coming. (Many people refer to the period as "the Independence", if they refer to it at all beyond "nowadays".)
A Fistful of Dollars
The Economy of Frontier
Under the Federal economic system, each citizen was granted a government account in the Federal United Financial Administration (FUFA) when he was born (or, to be more precise, when his notarized birth certificate was presented to a Federal economic executive), in which he could store any of the money which he earned during his lifetime. These accounts were not interest-bearing, so independent banks were still able to function by offering interest-bearing accounts. Along with the account, each citizen was given a debit card, which could pull money out of the account to pay for goods and services. Each payment was verified by comparing the citizen's thumbprint to that on file; a signature was still required to verify that the citizen had agreed to the payment. (Remote payments were permitted, but required special hardware: a device which attached to a personal computer and contained not only a card reader but a signature and thumbprint reader. Alternately, public terminals with these features were available at minimal cost.)
As was common practice on Federal colony worlds, a physical financial system had been established, using bills and coins. This was a stopgap measure meant to allow colonists to conduct business transactions until financial hardware - the devices needed to read debit cards and record thumbprints and signatures - could arrive and be fully installed. As a result, a large percentage of the population was still using physical currency when the starships stopped arriving. As soon as it became apparent that the starships wouldn't be arriving any time soon, most of the remaining colonists withdrew their funds from the single FUFA branch, in Dodge City, and converted it into physical money.
Since the other banks had not established branches on Frontier, almost nobody accepted payments directly from those accounts even before the Interstitium, and pre-paid money orders were only grudgingly accepted. When the starships stopped showing up, FUFA agreed to purchase all non-FUFA money orders from their owners in exchange for the full balance less a small transaction fee. In addition, it allowed those citizens who held accounts in other banks to convert the funds to FUFA accounts or hard currency, provided that the citizens had sufficient proof of their foreign account balances - typically the most recent statement plus a notarized letter signing away the citizen's right to the funds in the foreign account. Since the Interstitium began, nobody but FUFA has accepted any notes drawn on foreign banks, pre-paid or otherwise.
There are, however, a few banks native to Frontier. These occur mostly at the edges of civilization, and serve as a way for colonists to protect their money while they are away. Few of these banks offer interest-bearing accounts of any kind, and none offer traditional debit cards; if a bank offers any way to withdraw money without being physically present to take hard currency, it is through checks and pre-paid orders, and even these are rare.
Frontier's current economy is based almost entirely around physical money - bills and coins representing Federal credits (and multiples and fractions thereof). Very large transactions, and the everyday transactions of some of the aristocracy, are conducted through FUFA, but even these often are conducted by placing the equivalent sum in bills into a FUFA account and then transferring it to the recipient's account. (In the case of large transactions, this is primarily done to provide a central record of the transaction.)
The official symbol of the Federal credit is that of a boldface F with a vertical line through the center; the stem of the F is curved to the right below the lower bar such that the end of the stem is directly below the rightmost end of the top bar. This symbol has fallen out of use in the century since the Interstitium began, however, and credits are typically denoted in writing by following the amount with "FC".
The bills used on Frontier come in six major denominations: one credit, five credits, ten credits, twenty credits, fifty credits, and one hundred credits. The coins come in five denominations: one one-hundredth credit, one twentieth credit, one tenth credit, one quarter credit, and one half credit. The coins are made of various metals found in the eastern mountains, and their size increases with their value; the bills are universally made of a paper-like cloth, and are colored to provide quick visual identification of denominations. (A 1FC note is red, a 5FC note orange, a 10FC note green, a 20FC note yellow, a 50FC note blue, and a 100FC note white; a .01FC coin is about 2cm across and about 2mm thick, ranging up to about 5cm across and 5mm thick for a .5FC coin. In addition, the .05FC and .2FC coins have ribbed edges.)
A bill or coin is still legal tender, according to FUFA, as long as it is not destroyed or fraudulently defaced. A bill reduced to less than 51% of its original size, or a coin reduced to less than 76%, through damage - deliberate or otherwise - is considered destroyed; any form of currency which has been altered to disguise its denomination is considered fraudulently defaced. The act of destroying or defacing currency is not itself a criminal act under either Federal or Frontier law; attempting to pass such as legal tender is, however, a misdemeanor whose extent depends on the amount being passed. (Counterfeiting currency is extremely difficult - the apparatus to do so is expensive, large, hard to operate, and obvious to even the most casual observer. It's also a felony: creating artificial currency is punishable by up to several decades in prison and a fine up to one hundred thousand Federal credits.)