Whatever happened to travelers' cheques (checks) [telecom]

My grandmother had one of these. It looked like an Addresograph plate of the period.

And then you see a lot of businesses with satellite dishes on the roof...

To bring this back to travelers' cheques and telecom, I can remember when the home town Western Union office sold American Express travelers' cheques.

Charga-Plates (a trademark) were generally used by department stores in large cities. A notch in the metal plate corresponded with each member store, and a tab on the imprinter (operated by hand) was in a corresponding position for that store's notch. If the plate wouldn't fit in the imprinter because it did not have the proper notch, that store did not take the card. Each store had its own credit operation and billing, and that just made a handy way to have just one plate for a number of stores. If you opened an account in another store, they would ask if you had a Charge-Plate and would add their notch to the plate. If you didn't already have a ChargaPlate, a new one would be made up in a central location. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

I was in a Wal-Mart once when the satellite dish was down and it was general chaos because they could not take charge cards, dedit cards of checks. Wes Leatherock snipped-for-privacy@aol.com snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com

Back a few decades, the Playboy Club's wallet-size membership cards were made of metal. They used to trip the metal detectors at airports.