The second class of operations of the cheque and clearing service of the Austrian Postal Savings Bank embraces the different modes of disposing of the property of the depositors who share in the service. The cheque is in a general way the instrument to which they recur under its two fundamental forms of cheques of payment and cheques of clearing, according as the amount is to be paid in cash or to be transferred to the account of another participant in the clearing service. The cheque books remitted to holders serve the double purpose; it has not been found necessary to print distinct documents, nor even to give to these two classes of cheques different colours.
Cheque books containing fifty pieces are remitted to participants by the Central Office at the charge of 1 florin 50 kreutzers; this sum means 50 kreutzers, expense of paper and printing and 1 florin stamp duty. They are printed on the premises of the Central Office as are the attestations of receipts and deposits. About 2,500,000 of them are now annually reproduced and more than 23,000,000 of cheques have been issued since the official presses were first set up at Vienna. They are prepared either in German, or in any other language spoken in the Empire. Before sending them to the holders of an account the Office prints on each of these vouchers the number of the account for which they are to be used, as well as the name and address of the holder. (Fig. III.)
Expressed in ordinary terms, the cheque states, that the Savings Bank will pay, on the voucher being forwarded, the sum of which the amount in florins has been written out in full. It bears the signature of the person drawing it. To avoid frauds in the statement of the sums to be paid, the Savings Bank has adopted moreover an arrangement so ingenious and sure that up to the present time no fraud has been noted.
The cheque bears to the right four series of figures going from 1 to 9. The first set corresponds to thousands, the second to hundreds, the third to tens, the fourth to units; the four series united together can express the sum of 9,999 florins, beyond which no cheque can be drawn, so that if this part of the document is left intact, the amount of the cheque will be 9,999 florins, provided always that the written statement agrees with the series of figures. If a lower figure is stated, then the number of the thousands, hundreds, tens exceeding the amount desired must be cut off with a pair of scissors. Suppose for example the cheque is to be for 782 florins; the column of the thousands is to be cut off, figures 8 and 9 in the columns of the hundreds, the last figure in that of the tens and the last seven in the column of units. It is evident that by this ingenious method of control, it will never be possible to raise the amount of the cheque; it will be of no use to alter the written statement of the amount in order to augment it, for it will never be possible to make a corresponding alteration in the arrangement of the figures to the right; by this process of cutting off, the cheque can only be reduced in value but never augmented. And if the agreement between the written figures and the combination of the figures resulting from this way of cutting them out is not perfectly exact, the Central Office at Vienna rejects the voucher as possibly fraudulent, at any rate erroneous.
Firstly. (Cassa-checks.)
The cheque (of payment) can be payable to bearer at the Postal Savings Bank at Vienna. In this case it is delivered to the person who ought to receive the amount without the drawer having to transmit it to him. This party can either bank it himself immediately at the Post Office Bank at Vienna, or put it in circulation: this circulation is authorised for fourteen days, but the voucher cannot carry any endorsement. The cheque will be paid by the Office up to the time that the credit account of the drawer is sufficient to meet it.
If the cheque has been delivered to a person affiliated to the postal-service of cheques and clearing, he can have the amount put to his credit instead of receiving it in cash.
Secondly. (Zahlungsanweisungen des postsparcassen-Amtes.)
The customer of the Postal Savings Bank has the right to cause the amount of the cheque to be paid into the hands of a particular person in any one of the Post Offices; in this case he writes on the back of the cheque the address of the person for whom he intends it.
Figure III.