Articles & Advice
Functions of Money
The man or woman in the street would agree on coins and banknotes, but would they accept them from any country. What about cheques. They would probably be less willing to accept them than their own country's coins and notes but bank money actually accounts for by far the greatest proportion by value of the total supply of money. What about I credit cards and gold? The gold standard belongs to history but even today in many rich people in different parts of the world would rather keep some of their wealth in the form of gold than in official, inflation-prone currencies. The attractiveness of gold, from an aesthetic point of view, and its resistance to corrosion are two of the properties which led to its use for monetary transactions for thousands of years. In complete contrast, a form of money with virtually no tangible properties whatsoever electronic money - seems set to gain rapidly in popularity.
Functions of Money
 
  • Money as a Medium of Exchange: -
  •   The function of money as a medium of exchange solves all the difficulties of barter system. There is no necessity for a double coincidence of wants in the money economy. The man with cow who wants to purchase cloth need not seek a cloth seller who wants a cow. He can sell his cow in the market for money and then purchase cloth with the money obtained
     
     
  • Money as Measure of Value:-
  •   In money economy values of all commodities are expressed in terms of money. Money is like the yard stick of cloth merchant, as yard-stick measures all varieties of cloth, money measures the value of all varieties goods. This function of money makes transactions easy and also fair
     
     
  • Standard of Deferred Payment:-
  •   In a money economy the contracts are made for future payments terms of money instead of goods and promise to repay the loan in money. In this way money is the standard of deferred payments. This function stimulates all kinds of economic activities wjtich depend on borrowed money.
     
     
  • Money as a Store of Value:-
  •   Goods cannot be stored because they are perishable. People receive their incomes in money form and keep their savings in money form in banks.In this way, money is used to store value of commodities.
     
     
  • Store of value :-
  •   In order to be a medium of exchange, money must hold its value over time; that is, it must be a store of value. If money could not be stored for some period of time and still remain valuable in exchange, it would not solve the double coincidence of wants problem and therefore would not be adopted as a medium of exchange. As a store of value, money is not unique; many other stores of value exist, such as land, works of art, and even baseball cards and stamps. Money may not even be the best store of value because it depreciates with inflation. However, money is more liquid than most other stores of value because as a medium of exchange, it is readily accepted everywhere. Furthermore, money is an easily transported store of value that is available in a number of convenient denominations.
     
     
  • Medium of exchange :-
  •   Money's most important function is as a medium of exchange to facilitate transactions. Without money, all transactions would have to be conducted by barter, which involves direct exchange of one good or service for another. The difficulty with a barter system is that in order to obtain a particular good or service from a supplier, one has to possess a good or service of equal value, which the supplier also desires. In other words, in a barter system, exchange can take place only if there is a double coincidence of wants between two transacting parties. The likelihood of a double coincidence of wants, however, is small and makes the exchange of goods and services rather difficult. Money effectively eliminates the double coincidence of wants problem by serving as a medium of exchange that is accepted in all transactions, by all parties, regardless of whether they desire each others' goods and services.