In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, North American businesses were facing a growing problem of the skilled-alteration and outright forgery of their hand-written checks.
[1] Mechanical checkwriters work by protecting a check from unauthorized alteration of either the amount or the authorizing signature.
These methods may include any combination of: perforation (or 'punching'), embossing and debossing, and the imprint of hard to alter colored-ink filled fields being utilized on the financial instrument.
After buying out Willis, the new Checkometer Sales Company, Inc. was incorporated by Flavan Bayad, Hirschberg, and Theodore Hardy, with an initial capital stock value of $25,000.
Reliance was another business wholly controlled by the Paymaster Corporation and operated by the same staff, the only difference being the stationery that was used to contact customers.
If customers became behind in payments, letters bearing the signature and stationery of company attorney Bernard W Mages, ESQ would be used.