These stones could be as large as 12 feet in diameter and represented a value determined by both by the stone’s size, the quality of its craftsmanship and the history associated it. 5 See for example, ‘Money: the unauthorised biography’ by Felix Martin. 3  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  3  Societies do not need to have such social technology – there are examples in history of quite advanced 6  societies that have not used it. But modern economies and the changes to living standards to which we have become accustomed would almost certainly be impossible without it. This social technology is of course supported by other technologies - physical, legal and institutional. But these can be very different in different societies and they evolve and change over time. The claims we hold on each other and exchange can be expressed in physical form, like coins or as records in a paper or an electronic ledger. They can be issued or authorised by the state and governed by law - but they do not have to be. In the end, what counts is that the social convention that is money continues to hold. When it fails, when it gets ‘out of order’, the damage to society can be very great. And though money can exist without them and although they can vary, what I have called the supporting technologies matter hugely.
The objective is to reduce risk in the payment system. At the other end, state issued ‘cash’ – notes and coin – is used mainly for the smaller value payments that settle the bulk of transactions in our economy. 6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  That has not always been the case. At the end of the 1970s, 90-95% of payments by volume in the economy were made using cash. 8  Private money, in the form of cheques, bank transfers and more recently credit and debit cards were simply too expensive and too cumbersome to use for small value payments. The trend, however, has been away from cash towards a greater use of private bank money in the economy. The spread of credit and debit card technology meant that by 2000, cash payments accounted for less than 75% of payments by volume. 9  And a number of recent inter-linked developments in what I have called the technologies that support our money may be driving an acceleration of that trend. New regulations have reduced the cost of credit and debit card transactions by capping the fees that card companies and banks can charge merchants.