Promissaries

Promise notes for individual transactions are brought to a local institute called a Promissary, of which there are several in each enclave.

A promissary is not quite like a bank, since it doesn’t keep any liquid money on-hand, but it does keep account balances for individual citizens. Citizens must be signed up with a particular promissary to spend or receive money there, which can often mean it’s easier to bring black if you are spending money outside of your local enclave.

The promissary keeps a local copy of all the incoming records, and resolves incoming notes against citizen’s account balances, and rejects them if they found to be insufficient. Rejected notes are returned to the beneficiary party, and a warning is flagged on the spender’s account. Overspending is not uncommon, since citizens are not always aware of how much they have available, but repeat infraction will result in eviction of your account from the local promissary, and difficulty getting membership at a new one.

Once the note is accepted, it is added to the local ledger. At the end of each day, the ledger is stamped with the promissary’s own stamp, and transported to the master promissary at The Mint, where they are reviewed and finally stamped once more if the issuing branch is in good stead, and then added to the master ledger. The master ledger is used to resolve disputes over counterfeit promissary ledgers and other such, and to cash out those who want to resolve a chain of promises to retrieve it’s promised value.