The bank, like any modern one, held deposits and made loans, dealt in bills of exchange, changed money and conducted business abroad.

ECONOMIST: Millennium issue: Banking

Medieval Italian merchants developed commercial and financial techniques, such as bookkeeping and bills of exchange, that spread north and west to Europe's emerging maritime and Protestant powers, notably Holland and England.

FORBES: Magazine Article

Banking developed in Florence because of the ingenious development of bills of exchange, first as a way of paying debts without having to transport cash, then as a means of evading the church's usury laws, and finally as a means of extending credit.

ECONOMIST: Renaissance Florence

Moreover, it is quite likely that a strategy of short-term spending bills will complicate GOP efforts to get budget process reform in a couple of months in exchange for an increase in the debt limit.

FORBES: How The GOP Should Play The Government Shutdown Threat

Undercover agents wired Horng payments in Macau in exchange for fake bills at a rate of thirty cents for each phony dollar, smuggled in large bolts of fabric and boxes of toys.

NEWYORKER: The God of Gamblers