Scrip

Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitative payment of employees under truck systems; or for use in local commerce at times when regular currency was unavailable, for example in remote coal towns, military bases, ships on long voyages, or occupied countries in wartime.

Scrips have gained historical importance and become a subject of study in numismatics and exonumia due to their wide variety and recurring use.

In United States mining or logging camps where everything was owned and operated by a single company, scrip provided the workers with credit when their wages had been depleted.

[citation needed] When U.S. President Andrew Jackson issued his Specie Circular of 1836 due to credit shortages, Virginia Scrip was accepted as payment for federal lands.

The use of chips as company money in the early 19th century in Devon, England, in the Wheal Friendship[5] copper mine gave its name to a local village of Chipshop.

National governments considered themselves threatened by the success of stamp scrip projects, and shut them down; similar misgivings discouraged their later use elsewhere.

[6] The Alberta Social Credit Party government in 1937 issued prosperity certificates, a form of provincial currency, in an effort to encourage spending.

[citation needed][dubious – discuss] Community-wide scrip usage has begun or is on the rise in Ithaca, New York; Detroit; The Berkshires; Pittsboro, North Carolina; Traverse City, Michigan; Lamar, Colorado; Calgary, Canada; Bristol, UK; and Hagen, Germany.

[7][8][9][10][full citation needed] Breadcoin scrip was created in Washington DC in 2016 to address food insecurity.

To side-step implications that the community intended their scrip as an unlawful substitute for currency, it now issues exchange coupons called Boon Kut Chum.

Physical gift cards often have a magnetic strip or optically readable bar code to facilitate redemption at the point of sale.

In the late 1980s, the term scrip evolved to include a fundraising method popular with non-profit organizations like schools, bands and athletic groups.

The families redeem the gift cards at full face value, and the discount or rebate is retained by the non-profit organization as revenue.

[16] Some provinces and states in North America (e.g. California, Ontario, Massachusetts, Ohio, Washington) have enacted laws to eliminate non-use fees or expirations,[17] but because the laws often only apply to single-merchant cards[18] buyers have to review the gift card conditions prior to purchase to determine exact restrictions and fees.

As a type of federal aid to local governments or private corporations, Congress would grant land in lieu of cash.