Cash, Currency, Credit

[Icosahedron]

Except, what is the TL required to read the card? That's the TL at which forgery takes place. If it requires a TL15 ATM to get out some drinking cash, you're back to the same problem of carrying specie or some such. You only have to fool the reader, after all.

Fooling the local reader only works for small quantities of money, quantities that constitute an 'acceptable risk' for the financiers.
For larger quantities, samples will be shipped out and checked at a 'clearing house'.

Let's face it, the 'reader' for today's banknotes is generally the human eye - possibly backed up with a UV light. Forgery takes place, but the expense of the forging process to fool even this most basic reader sets it into the realm of major organised crime, and you have to produce huge quantities to pay back the set up costs. Large operations like this are an easier target for Intel.
No group of PCs is going to forge cash or cards - not IMTU anyway!

Sure, you could buy a dodgy card and you might get a few drinks out of it, you might even pay your lodgings for a month or two - if Intel doesn't crack the operation and trace you first - hey, with some luck, you might even make back more than the card cost you.

However, you're not going to buy a lot of two hundred computers on your card or, heaven forbid, a starship.
Crooks don't buy a major purchase with forged notes and cards - that's what money laudering is for, you sell the forgeries to the street punks and use their clean money for the high level deal. Large transactions are thoroughly checked.

Any trading company worth it's salt will only do business with traders who have been thoroughly checked out. Even a letter of credit will only buy you so much leeway and for a limited time (forget that starship).

If you want to be a respected trader in these parts, you set up business and wait a few weeks or months for your credit rating to catch up with you. If you haven't done this, you're a lightweight, all you'll get is a few scraps from the table - and a visit from a bounty hunter if you cross the local Houses.

My guess is that a card alone might be good for two figure deals, maybe three. If you have supporting documentation, you might make the odd four figure deal.
Letters of credit should be good for four and maybe five figure deals, but you'd better have some other collateral or evidence of authenticity.
If you intend to make five figure plus deals, sit down, open an office or rent an apartment, wait for your credit reference to arrive and then work your way up in respectability with the local banks and Merchant Houses.

 

[atpollard]

My guess is that a card alone might be good for two figure deals, maybe three. If you have supporting documentation, you might make the odd four figure deal.
Letters of credit should be good for four and maybe five figure deals, but you'd better have some other collateral or evidence of authenticity.
If you intend to make five figure plus deals, sit down, open an office or rent an apartment, wait for your credit reference to arrive and then work your way up in respectability with the local banks and Merchant Houses.

Good Post - some nice ideas.

Your Credit Rating might actually preceede you. If the 'Banks' routinely send updates to all branches of all account activity within a 10 parsec range, then you may arrive with your credit history only a month out of date.

If you routinely made purchases in the 2 to 3 figure range up until a month ago and suddenly you are waving around a card with a 7 figure balance and looking to make a 6 figure purchase - the bank may want to wait for the next update before approving that transaction.

If you routinely made purchases in the 6 to 7 figure range up until a month ago and now you are waving around a card with a 7 figure balance and looking to make a 6 figure purchase the bank may feel comfortable in putting that transaction through immediately.

 

[pendragonman]

Good Post - some nice ideas.

Your Credit Rating might actually preceede you. If the 'Banks' routinely send updates to all branches of all account activity within a 10 parsec range, then you may arrive with your credit history only a month out of date.

Credit could also work like it did in the 19th century, with the following modification:

Instead of carrying around letters of credit or cashier's checks on paper, these things could be digitized onto something no bigger than an IPod Nano. Perhaps even thinner to the point of equivalence with a credit card size and thickness.

Of course this could lead to "forged" digital documents, but this would be no different than the 19th century model. Thus, unless these items are somehow tamper proof sealed (ala invariant wax seals), credit would not tend to be forwarded until the document is verified. These verifications were done by local branch managers, government officials, rich moguls, etc. in the 19th century, sometimes basing their "verification" on the verifier's perception of the presenter's character and morales.

 

[atpollard]

The 19th century model would seem counterproductive under the 1 week in jump, 1 week in port economic model.

One week in jump and three weeks in port awaiting verification would seem to kill any PC speculation.

The alternative of transporting millions of credits in cash everywhere you go would require rethinking the whole risk-reward balance of piracy.

 

[chshrkt]

...The alternative of transporting millions of credits in cash everywhere you go would require rethinking the whole risk-reward balance of piracy.

Bricks of gold-pressed latinum anyone?

Yes, I like pirates IMTU.

 

[jawillroy]

Well, consider that when I deposit a check the bank waits three to five business days to clear that check before I can touch it. That's here on earth, between two earth banks, with offices in the same darn city. There isn't even a technological excuse: it's bureaucratic, and an opportunity for the bank to start using your money before you do.

If there was a lag time of three weeks or so for bank communications, I certainly wouldn't expect banks to be the least bit more forthcoming, no matter how fancy their terminals were. So a merchant working a local route - and most will be - will have accounts established on every world they touch on. They'll be back in a month or two, and they'll be doing business. If not, they can just have the bank wire the money by courier, and in a few weeks, it'll be in their home account.

Merchants and adventurers travelling to places they've never been will be unknowns there. Nobody's going to give them a single credit until established, trusted third parties give some kind of proof that they are who they say they are, and actually have the money they say they do. If they need cash right away, well yes, they'd better bring it with them - at least a bearer bond from an established interstellar bank. I don't imagine PCs would be happy carrying tens of millions in the ship's locker, but if they're so impatient that they can't wait a few weeks for the banks to handle their credit, I say they're asking for whatever they get - and are just as foolish as the merchant who won't at least carry a few week's operating costs in cash.

I don't think this'll harm PC speculation any more than it harmed speculation in the 18th or 19th centuries. And that three weeks waiting for your money to show up gives the GM some wonderful opportunities.

 

[coliver988]

I can't find it at the moment, but wasn't one of the CT adventures dealing with a Imperial Navy craft that was carrying the payroll, in cash, to a planet? So for the Navy, apparently, you get paid in actual tangible credits rather than a credit voucher, credit card, or whatever.

GURPS Far Trader has some explanation on how the Imperial Credit works as well. Excerpt:

"For instance, if a bank on Mertactor wishes to offer its customers the service of extending letters of credit for business on Glisten, it must first negotiate with a bank on Glisten to become its correspondent. A correspondent relationship means that the banks agree to honor each other's letters of credit at face value, subject to certain conditions. Foremost among these is the maintenance of reserve funds equal to an agreed upon percentage of the volume of business they anticpate conducting."

It goes on, but that's one possibility that was alluded to below.

 

[atpollard]

I don't think this'll harm PC speculation any more than it harmed speculation in the 18th or 19th centuries. And that three weeks waiting for your money to show up gives the GM some wonderful opportunities.

I respectfully disagree.

Eighteenth century speculation in Traveller terms would have the player purchasing a ship for 10 MCr, buying 10 MCr worth of cargo, transporting it to another sector, and selling it for 20 to 50 MCr. Traveller does not pay off ships in 1 voyage. Remember that a Month in Traveller is a round-trip voyage - comparable to a year sailing from Bristol to Hong Kong and back on a china clipper. Imagine if the bank required you to wait a Year for your check to clear.

In Traveller, a Jump-2 or Jump-3 'Tramp Merchant' requires both a rapid turnover AND speculation to make the bank payments. Speculation requires large amounts of capital. One jump per month means that the bank will own the ship.

 

[jawillroy]

"Eighteenth century speculation in Traveller terms would have the player purchasing a ship for 10 MCr, buying 10 MCr worth of cargo, transporting it to another sector, and selling it for 20 to 50 MCr. "

Fair enough.

"One jump per month means that the bank will own the ship."

So jump two (or maybe squeeze in three) jumps. You can do it if you carry cash, or if you've taken the trouble to establish yourself. Which is why a merchant ship shouldn't venture too far from its homeworld in the first place. You start out smart and small. You set up accounts at some regular, safe ports of call close to home, and build your credit there. If you've picked a good homeworld, a free trader should be able to make a modest profit on cargo and passenger hauling alone*, and you'll be able to watch for lucky breaks (either in the form of spec cargo, or in adventure opportunities.) If the ship gets far enough ahead, the captain can stick a few months worth of payments in escrow and then take off on a longer voyage - but if he wants to do any buying IMTU, he better head out with a full hold of saleable cargo and a locker-full of credits.

*I'd even just average these out, and handwave that the player's been doing the milk run between worlds A, T and maybe Q for a few months and squeaking by with a profit of X a month.

 

[jawillroy]

IMTU, anyway, a jump 2 or 3 ship isn't a tramp merchant; it's either a big freighter, a liner, or if it's small it's a company's trade scout. You get up into that range of ship cost, and your individual merchant can't make payments. You need a combine to make those profitable. YMMV.

 

[coliver988]

...You can do it if you carry cash, or if you've taken the trouble to establish yourself. Which is why a merchant ship shouldn't venture too far from its homeworld in the first place. ....

and leaving the cash in escrow opens all sorts of potentially interesting possibilities as well, depending on the type of bank. Interest rates to get extra capital but at the expense of minimum duration, identity thefts taking the money, banks folding, computer errors, someone else using your account to launder money, using a startown or planetary bank for higher interest versus starport/TAS approved-type of bank with little to no interest, an inconvenient war breaking out.

 

[jawillroy]

"...potentially interesting possibilities as well, depending on the type of bank..."

Oh, absolutely. Once you've been a dernfool enough Ref to allow your players a starship, it's totally necessary to find as many ways as possible to keep them from using the thing to print money.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

For larger quantities, samples will be shipped out and checked at a 'clearing house'.

Well, there goes my mortgage payments! If I have to wait for a clearance to travel back to my point of origin, then back here, that's a minimum of three weeks I'm in port. And, I need to make at least two runs a month to make my payments. Looks like piracy just became a more attractive option........

GURPS Far Trader has some explanation ......

Ummmmm, exactly. A letter of credit. Just like the age of sail, and it corresponds to canon (real canon, not that SJ stuff...) as this was one of the roles of the JTAS office. (Which, I believe, someone mentioned up thread.)

 

[aramis]

The alternative of transporting millions of credits in cash everywhere you go would require rethinking the whole risk-reward balance of piracy.

The need to carry such loads of currency is precisely WHY I see piracy as viable. Most merchants actually will tie up as much as is practical in likely goods, but my players have never had a major issue with carrying MCr10-MCr200 in cash.

Traveller does not pay off ships in 1 voyage.

Under Bk 2 and T20, I've had a well-capitalized ship (MCr5 or so) pay off on one transaction.... their MCr5 rolled into MCr300...

One good voyage can do so.

 

[Icosahedron]

I agree with Jawillroy. It means rethinking the way that Traveller is played, and as he says, YMMV, but I think it's a more realistic approach.

You no longer have PCs flying gung-ho into the unknown in the hope that they will find some computer parts to make a killing on, but instead you get a lot of intrigue and contact-making and reputation-building and - well, role-playing.

In my current PBEM I have a merchant ship going into the unknown, but it is owned outright with no mortgage by a combine that can afford to speculate on a new trade route and the players just crew it. They either carry cash with them, or they get their bank to wire ahead their credit history.

As ATP said, quite often your credit records can precede you, since they don't have to wait a week in port between jumps, they're just transferred to the next mail ship out.

 

[Icosahedron]

Well, there goes my mortgage payments! If I have to wait for a clearance to travel back to my point of origin, then back here, that's a minimum of three weeks I'm in port. And, I need to make at least two runs a month to make my payments. Looks like piracy just became a more attractive option........

I can see an exception being made for mortgage payments - these will be regular payments made to a local bank that will have an agreement with your homeworld bank, reducing the likelihood of fraud, and if anything untoward does happen - hey you just skipped. Say hello to Mr Skipchaser and friends.

 

[Knightsky]

I can't find it at the moment, but wasn't one of the CT adventures dealing with a Imperial Navy craft that was carrying the payroll, in cash, to a planet?

"Salvage on Sharmun", from JTAS #4 (also in Best of JTAS #1).