The primary impetus for the development of clearing houses was the increasing importance of checkable deposits as a means of payment. Large merchants were making payments by checks drawn on their deposit accounts as early as the 1780s. But in the 1840s and 1850s the use of checks spread rapidly to shopkeepers, mechanics and professional men.
The clearing house reduced the costs of clearing and settling the interbank obligations arising from the collection of checks and banknotes, and thereby made feasible the daily settlement in specie of each bank’s multilateral net claim on, or obligation to, the other banks in the clearing house.