There was a discussion in the chat room recently about the silliness of paper money and it led to a conversation covering the fascinating history and reason behind various sorts of money.

Goods and services can be traded for what goods and services another person may need. This works on a small and short term scale, and the resources will be practical things such as cloth, food, livestock, labor, or land, but there comes a point where that is impractical.
If you have a great number of beets and your neighbor offers more to you in exchange for something else, not only do you have no current need, but they may go bad before you have a chance to eat or spend them. Beets also take up more space than you have, but you don't have the space now to trade them for goats.
This is where precious metals and stones come in. They are worth more, take up far less space, and the metals are still very practical and useful, but won't spoil or need feeding like other goods. So you can trade your beets for a sack of silver and use the silver to buy your goats later.
Later, when your pockets become to heavy when you go to make expensive purchases, another respectable neighbor offers to hold your silver for you in his barn. He gives you a receipt for every five pounds of silver he holds, and you, bearing these much lighter five pound notes, can go and trade them for goods and resources and your neighbors can give the banker the receipts so that they may have the silver you owe them by paper.
Of course, if the barn is robbed, the papers are no good, but that is how the idea works.

So how do your cultures do business? Do they barter? If they have coinage or precious goods to trade, what is the most common? Is it a substance unique to that world? Do they use banks and paper? Banks and plastic? If it is a science fiction, do they use records on the internet like credits? On what standard does your interplanetary alliance run? Are they off their standard and no one knows? Discuss, share your thoughts, and explore the vast world of fantasy finance.

Ooh, great thread.

In New-Sindo they have minted coins to buy things, but prices are bickered over until one can be agreed upon.

In miscellaneous farming villages, things are bartered for useful items, for instance, salt for a pair of shoes. In small, close-knit villages, the inhabitants will trade or give items to neighbors, and barter only with foreigners.

The Elves use coral and other such things, since there is plenty of it.

The Dark Elves take what they want, but they love shiny things, so if they had a currency, it would be metallic.

In Gersho, they mainly barter. The city has grown up from a farming colony for several years, but they still place more value on readily available resources than savings.

In Dunixia, the currency of choice is the gold flagon, a thick coin with a cup on one side and a dragon on the other. It is so called because it is the the value of one flagon of the finest wine their vineyards have to offer.

(We've been around these subjects before, but that's OK. )

The culture I have most developed uses a fairly libertarian system of coinage and currency (anyone can coin money or print notes, which function more like bearer bonds than fiat money, but others can choose whether to accept them at face value or not), and because I don't really want the problems of the stories to be centered around that sort of thing I've decided that mages can detect, and more importantly trace, counterfeit coins and money very easily.

In a strongly religious culture, it may also come about that currency may be an item important to the temples, coins inscribed with a holy image or word, or that the temples may be banks after a fashion themselves. That could open up a whole realm of cultural implications.

Whoa. I never thought of that.

Merpeople could trade coral or pearls....

Or shells, or fish scales.

Interesting statement, in view of your culture's 'libertarian' approach to money... if anyone can print the equivalent of bearer bonds for themselves, what then qualifies as counterfeiting?

Somewhat unrelated to examining finance in your books, I recently stumbled on a company which makes coins, bars and gems for use as props (in tabletop RPGs, movies, or anything else). And it's such a cool idea I had to order some. xD

Anyway, they have some really neat designs that I thought could serve as inspiration when designing currency.

Counterfeit currency is currency that is not actually issued by the person or institution it claims to have been issued by; in addition to that definition, a coin is counterfeit if it does not contain the kind and amount of metal it claims.