Private currencies

A private currency is a currency issued by a private entity, be it an individual, a commercial business or a nonprofit enterprise. It is often contrasted with fiat currency issued by governments or central banks. In many countries, the issuance of private paper currencies is severely restricted by law.

Today, there are over four thousand privately issued currencies in more than 35 countries. These include commercial trade exchanges that use barter credits as units of exchange, private gold and silver exchanges, local paper money, computerized systems of credits and debits, and digital currencies in circulation, such as digital gold currency.

In the United States, the Free Banking Era lasted between 1837 and 1866, when almost anyone could issue paper money. States, municipalities, private banks, railroad and construction companies, stores, restaurants, churches and individuals printed an estimated 8,000 different types of money by 1860. If an issuer went bankrupt, closed, left town, or otherwise went out of business the note would be worthless. Such organizations earned the nickname of "wildcat banks" for a reputation of unreliability; they were often situated in remote, unpopulated locales said to be inhabited more by wildcats than by people. The National Bank Act of 1863 ended the "wildcat bank" period. See also: History of free banking.

In Australia, the Bank Notes Tax Act of 1910 practically shut down the circulation of private currencies by imposing a prohibitive tax on the practice. It was later repealed and a fine imposed for private currencies (Commonwealth Bank Act 1945).

Now, s. 44(1) of the Australian Reserve Bank Act 1959 prohibits this practice. In 1976, Wickrema Weerasooria published an article which suggested that the issuing of bank cheques violated this section, though some banks responded that since bank cheques were printed with the words "not negotiable" on them, the cheques were not intended for circulation and thus did not violate the statute.

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