I mentioned in an earlier post that I felt one of the services the imperium would provide on every world was issuing prepaid debit cards and I thought I would expand on my probably deranged reasoning. First a summary of my points of gammery view for why they would followed with a more detailed reasoning.

1.) Hacking and forging of electronic records.
2.) Control of capital
3.) Money Trail
4.) Deliberate inconvenience
5.) Interest payments

It seems (correctly or incorrectly) the more integrated our world becomes the more prevalent cyber crime is getting. Add to that a built lead time of a week before any flim flam can be detected and I am very dubious the current E-Bank model we have would survive in the Imperium. So travellers would need to take something with them between worlds other than banking records. Currency is possible but unwieldy and if our governments have decided allowing people to stockpile huge amounts of cash is bad I would believe the Emperor would frown on it as well. The prepaid debit card analog works okay for me because you need to get it issued from the Imperial Consul (IC) so it should be harder to forge and makes it an Imperial Crime if you do. Forge it and you are chased throughout known space not just by one or two worlds. Also the card (or cards) need to be turned in at the destination world's IC to get turned back into spendable money. To clarify for most worlds these are not legal tender and have to be turned into local currency although this usually means opening a bank account to access E-Banking on worlds capably of doing this. Worlds lacking the infrastructure to do so more often than not will use them as legal tender and locals doing business with travellers have a POS linked to the IC.

I am not very knowledgeable about international monetary policy but I do know that countries get into to trouble when too much capital is withdrawn as Russia and Greece have recently shown. The imperium is obsessed with free trade so I don't think capital transfer controls would be the norm I do think there is a vested interest in knowing how much is leaving and where it is going. By forcing the transaction to go through the IC the Imperium would have access to data it might not otherwise. Also world governments could petition for some kind of action if there was a crisis. It also allows the Imperium to keep world economies isolated from each other so if the local currency craps out the IC stops issuing the cards. Further any rebellious world suddenly has no ability to buy off world except using physical goods. This gives the IC a very big stick to threaten world governments with.

To have one of these issued I am sure the IC would have access to better than average means of confirming a person's identity. So the Imperium could track individual's money if it was necessary to hinder money laundering and other criminal enterprises. Creepy police state! How could the adventures do anything right? Not really every traveller would be doing this so the amount of data would be staggering so if the Imperium wasn't looking at you it is unlikely they would catch anything. Also remember the Imperium is only concerned with economic crimes for the most part and even those have to threaten interstellar trade.

It makes moving money a hassle to a certain degree by design. Long term investments are the most beneficial to both the investor and the economy as a whole so the Imperium would have a reason to try and keep money on a world to develop that world into a more valuable one. However if you are the champion of hands off governing you don't want to pass many laws and then try and enforce them so you come up with indirect ways to encourage behavior you want. I am leaning toward the view that each card would have a maximum value of 10Kcr so it would be really irritating to move any truly huge amount of cash but not for the "average" traveller encouraging people to take the minimum they feel they will need leaving the rest in local circulation.

And finally banks are more likely than not willing to back this because of the weirdness of when would the transfer take place and who is paying interest when. These days interest gets calculated in ever diminishing fractions of time but where is the capital when it is traveling in jump space? If financial markets are controlling the money transfers it could cause headaches for them so it would behoove then to dump it in someone else's lap. The Imperium wouldn't worry about it because the prepaid cards don't earn interest.

How does any of that effect gaming in the Imperium? Well foremost their first and last stop at any world would be to the IC to convert their filthy lucre allowing the GM to impose imperial entanglements easily. It can encourage the desire for stuff rather than money that will be traceable. It gives pirates something to steal. Yes that is total meta-game but ideally you want a reason for pirates to attack and for merchants to surrender. Everyone wandering around with a cash equivalent provides the target and after a drawn out process the Imperium reimbursing the victims means NPC's have a good reason to give in as most pirates would take their stuff and leave them their lives and ship. Player's of course will fight to the death because it is what we do but if they are passengers and get robbed you have just created the most intense thirst for blood and they will relentlessly pursue the pirates who robbed them.

Or I could just have to much time on my hands and think this stuff up.