Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment for any monetary debt. Each jurisdiction determines what is legal tender, but essentially it is anything which when offered ("tendered") in payment of a debt extinguishes the debt. There is no obligation on the creditor to accept the tendered payment, but the act of tendering the payment in legal tender discharges the debt.
Detail of the obverse of a Series 1950 United States ten-dollar bill, showing the phrase "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private, and is redeemable in lawful money at the United States Treasury, or at any Federal Reserve Bank." This phrase was subsequently shortened in later issues to "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private."
Indian rupees were stamped with Government of Pakistan to be used as legal tenders in the new state of Pakistan in 1947.
Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are: medium of exchange, a unit of account, a store of value and sometimes, a standard of deferred payment.
Banknotes and coins
A 640 BC one-third stater electrum coin from Lydia. According to Herodotus, the Lydians were the first people to introduce the use of gold and silver coins. It is thought by modern scholars that these first stamped coins were minted around 650 to 600 BC.
Song Dynasty Jiaozi, the world's earliest paper money
Printing paper money at a printing press in Perm