12th July 1963

Jersey gets its first ever local bank notes

When Jersey needed to raise funds, it came up with a profitable wheeze: it would issue its first ever peacetime banknotes.

Although it might sound like it was trying to create money out of thin air, the plan had a sound financial basis. It would, in effect, be producing a new product – a printed slip of paper that just happened to be a banknote – that locals would ‘buy’ with the existing mainland currency they held. This would happen quite naturally when shops and businesses gave them change in local currency after accepting mainland notes.

The banks would accept the mainland currency when the businesses paid it into their accounts and the States would swap it for more local currency, thus giving the States the funds it needed to invest in UK government securities which, over time, would earn a profit that would contribute to the island economy.