3 ms·

How did people do this before electronic payments?

by photonbeam 4y ago

yarg 4y ago
With cheques.
ksherlock 4y ago
Write a check and mail it in.
- pavon 4y ago
  And that is how I still do it to avoid paying processing fees and giving up my tax information to some third party who uses dark patterns to try to get you to share your private tax information with marketers.
retrac 4y ago
Others have already mentioned cheques, and those were standard for most non-urgent matters. But in a loose sense, electronic payment has been around for quite a while. 50 or 100 years ago, a business with a large, outstanding tax debt might well pay it by wire transfer. Basically a cheque done quickly by telegram, later telex, then computerized. And it's still around apparently -- the Canada Revenue Agency says I can pay my taxes from abroad by wire transfer.
Symbiote 4y ago
Maybe the answer is more interesting in Europe, where electronic payment systems existed long before smartphones and the WWW. You would probably pay by giro, very commonly used to pay utility bills etc. The tax office provides a pre-printed machine-readable giro slip, which looks similar to a cheque but includes your tax number and amount owed (or electric company account number etc). You take that to your own bank, and they transfer the money from your account to the tax office's account -- originally this might be partly by post, but at least the printed slip is much more machine-readable than a cheque. I think by the 1980s the slips were no longer posted around, the payment was electronic. Of course, you could take cash to pay in to your account at the same time. You could also take the giro to a post office, and pay in cash. Or you could write a cheque and post both the cheque and the giro to the giro processing centre. I think postage was free. The in-person parts of the system still exists, though I think the post-a-cheque bit has gone. It remains the default way to pay a bill (including a tax bill) with cash or without using a computer. Before that, I don't know, since before the giro system most people in the UK didn't have bank accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_(banking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_(banking) Picture of a current giro slip, at the bottom of the bill: https://bionic.co.uk/business-energy/guides/business-energy-bills/ https://bionic.co.uk/business-energy/guides/business-energy-... The MP proposing the system in Parliament in 1965, noting it already existed in most western European countries: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1965/jul/21/postal-giro-service https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1965/jul/... -- "this is a simple system of credit transfer which can be operated through our network of 23,000 post offices throughout the country ... All these giro clearing houses are linked together by Telex machine".

How did people do this before electronic payments?

yarg 4y ago

With cheques.

ksherlock 4y ago

Write a check and mail it in.

pavon 4y ago
And that is how I still do it to avoid paying processing fees and giving up my tax information to some third party who uses dark patterns to try to get you to share your private tax information with marketers.

retrac 4y ago

Others have already mentioned cheques, and those were standard for most non-urgent matters. But in a loose sense, electronic payment has been around for quite a while. 50 or 100 years ago, a business with a large, outstanding tax debt might well pay it by wire transfer. Basically a cheque done quickly by telegram, later telex, then computerized. And it's still around apparently -- the Canada Revenue Agency says I can pay my taxes from abroad by wire transfer.

Symbiote 4y ago

Maybe the answer is more interesting in Europe, where electronic payment systems existed long before smartphones and the WWW. You would probably pay by giro, very commonly used to pay utility bills etc. The tax office provides a pre-printed machine-readable giro slip, which looks similar to a cheque but includes your tax number and amount owed (or electric company account number etc). You take that to your own bank, and they transfer the money from your account to the tax office's account -- originally this might be partly by post, but at least the printed slip is much more machine-readable than a cheque. I think by the 1980s the slips were no longer posted around, the payment was electronic. Of course, you could take cash to pay in to your account at the same time. You could also take the giro to a post office, and pay in cash. Or you could write a cheque and post both the cheque and the giro to the giro processing centre. I think postage was free. The in-person parts of the system still exists, though I think the post-a-cheque bit has gone. It remains the default way to pay a bill (including a tax bill) with cash or without using a computer. Before that, I don't know, since before the giro system most people in the UK didn't have bank accounts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_(banking) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giro_(banking) Picture of a current giro slip, at the bottom of the bill: https://bionic.co.uk/business-energy/guides/business-energy-bills/ https://bionic.co.uk/business-energy/guides/business-energy-... The MP proposing the system in Parliament in 1965, noting it already existed in most western European countries: https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1965/jul/21/postal-giro-service https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1965/jul/... -- "this is a simple system of credit transfer which can be operated through our network of 23,000 post offices throughout the country ... All these giro clearing houses are linked together by Telex machine".