Wondering if anyone has some house rules for interstellar banking. There has to be some type of interstellar banking system considering the interstellar commerce that goes on. However interstellar communication is limited. The only true interstellar communication, in the Imperium, appears to be by Astropath which isn't an exact communication and astropaths are a fairly rare and valuable resource.

So I'm thinking of using a variation of the Templar banks. The acolytes deposit an amount at a location and the bank issues a letter of credit for the sum, minus a percentage, to be redeemed at the destination at another bank. I'm thinking of having the letters issued by the various trading houses and/or the church.

Wonder how others have resolved this dilema or tried some variation of the above and if so how it worked out.

I required that one pay an astropath to confirm the voucher, so such vouchers are always for VERY large amounts, and require payments to the source world's astropath and the destination world's astropath.

heh. This is one I've come across. Several of the group I run are extremely wealthy (they own their own noble house) but are limited to one planet (scintilla). In order to take some or their wealth with them when they visit distant worlds they have to do one of several things;

• Get the money turned into actual throne Gelt. Each planet may have its distinct currency but Thrones are either accepted or exchanged at least one place on every world be it a bank or an administratium office, for those wishing to avoid detection there are countless other smaller currency houses or syndicates. Obviously this is a little risky (carrying large amounts of thrones around) but for an additional fee they will provide you with a genelocked chit that functions as a bank account. All you need to do is walk into the right office or bank and withdraw the money (they'll provide it in local currency for an additional fee). As throne gelt is raised against the tithe, its value is more or less stable.
• Get a writ from the church. The Ecclesiarchy are omnipresent, a position they exploit to turn a profit in favours. A favour is a high denomination bull (church edict) which can be swapped at any major cathedral for a certain amount of the local currency. Alternatively, these can provide services such as masses or x years sins forgiven. As everyone has need of these items a barter economy can be built around them, with Bulls signed by higher ranking church officials worth more, than those signed by any old priest. The value of these can fluctuate a little, as a priest might be famous on one world but not on another.
• Take it with them in gold or jewels. again, very risky as wealthy travellers can attract a lot of unwelcome attention. however, this is the simplest option for those staying away from cities and going to feudal or feral worlds. This is open to all sorts of random fluctuations in value so a little bit of planning is advised in regards to what you're going to take.

hope some of these ideas are helpful.

The way we play is on any major imperial world, and in the better parts particularly, everything is handled by credit. On less industrialized worlds the acolytes can transfer their hard currency onto data slates that work like credit cards with smart chips. On feral worlds or non imperial areas, they have to take hard currency and sometimes get it changed to the local type.

Most big payments are handled by automatic draft like spaceship cost and rent.

I use the Astropaths for banking matters sort of the same way you used the telegraph for banking in the American old west. If you're on a richly populated world (like a hive world), getting a hold of an astropath for private transactions probably isnt very hard. In fact those worlds probably have their own banking institutions and these institutions probably caters to off-world clients and probably have their own astropaths on retainer for such transactions. Sure it would cost a pretty penny to do the transaction, it does certainly cost A LOT less than trying to do the same transaction on a remote frontier world or feral world, where the only Imperial Outpost might have only one astropath that has more important and official duties to attend to than helping out off-world "private investigators" with banking issues, which would require substantially more bribes and transaction fee's than on a more civilised and populated world...