I guess you're too young to remember when ALL transactions involved trust. Cheques didn't even have any kind of verification whatsoever, you just handed them ou

I guess you're too young to remember when ALL transactions involved trust. Cheques didn't even have any kind of verification whatsoever, you just handed them out and the shops had to just hope they would clear... if they did not, the payee could obviously get into trouble with the law, but criminals still found creative ways to get away with it... watch the movie "Catch me if you can" to see one of the most entertaining abuses of cheques in history.