I Think This is the Found of Rishengchang Draft Bank 日升昌
The Rishengchang is China’s first draft bank. It basically helped propel Pingyao to be the financial center of the Qing dynasty. Rishengchang built several branches across the country effectively building China’s first banking network. In the days before automobiles, this was an incredible feat since transfers of money had to be done by the only way possible – walking. Rishengchang at one point controlled most of the empire’s silver and this made it very powerful.
Sample of a Piao in Rishengchang 日升昌 in Pingyao 平遥
They have an instrument called a piao, which may be likened to modern day checks. In this case, the piao were long documents used to exchange for money. This being China, attempts were made to counterfiet them, yes even back then, but the paio were security enhanced with watermarks and a complex system of passwords for encoding characters on the piao were employed. Impressively, there was no report of false claiming of piao due to this method. Maybe our modern day banks can learn a thing or two about improving security.
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