Postal orders of the United Kingdom

They were the brainchild of the president of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, John Skirrow Wright which was to enable poorer people to buy goods and services by post, as they were unlikely to have bank accounts.

Since 1922, British postal orders have been issued in the four parts of the UK (England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales).

The postal orders that were issued from a football pools machine have a perfinned series of numbers and letters.

In late 2002, the Royal Mail decided to introduce a series of gift postal orders.

Since then, Royal Mail introduced a series of postal orders which can be used for purchases at Argos stores.

The 1946 play The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan, and the two subsequent films based on it, features the story of a schoolboy trying to clear his name over the theft of a five-shilling postal order.

becoming increasingly popular as a form of payment, thanks to the auction websites such as eBay, and it is much safer for the seller than paying by cheque, as postal orders cannot bounce.