h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This description of banking does a good job of discussing the deposit function of a bank, a lesser job of discussing the credit function, and no job of describing the payment function.

That is to say, the author seems to have left out that banks also fulfill the very important role of allowing you to pay somebody across the state/country/world by means of a check, ACH transfer, or wire transfer. The infrastructure required to do this (with few mistakes) is not a small undertaking, and should not be left out of a discussion about banking.

Ok well, there was the one line about transferring payment between people and counries....the fact remains that this should be more thoroughly discussed in a summation of "banking".