Scrip

This article is about currency. For the company, see Scrip World Pharmaceutical News. For the medical order, see medical prescription.

A scrip is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons. Scrips have been used in local commerce at times when regular currency was unavailable, including remote coal towns, military bases, ships on long voyages, or occupied countries in wartime. In some cases, scrips have been used for exploitative payment of employees under truck systems. It has been illegal in the US for companies to pay employees in scrip since 1938.

Besides company scrip, other forms of scrip include land scrip, scrip issues, local currencies, vouchers, token coins such as subway tokens, IOUs, arcade tokens and tickets, and points on some credit cards. Scrips have gained historical importance and become a subject of study in numismatics and exonumia due to their wide variety and recurring use. Scrip behaves similarly to a currency, and can thus be used to study monetary economics.

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