It isn't clear if the latest guidance would apply to a merchant's online scrip.
Cigarettes were a form of scrip during the World Wars (prisoners still use them today).
Easy credit, debit cards and automatic teller machines may have made scrip a thing of the past.
If you have got a "scrip" or "stock" dividend (where you've taken shares instead of cash) take extra care.
And watch out for state labor laws that forbid scrip or deferred pay.
Bankrupt regional governments started to pay their workers in scrip, such as the patacones issued by Buenos Aires Province.
Auburn University in Alabama paid its professors and employees in scrip during the Depression, like a lot of other cash-strapped institutions.
Some California towns resorted to one-penny scrip during the mid-1970s, when a severe copper shortage sucked all the pennies out of circulation.
"Anytime the government can't or won't provide money, people have used scrip, " says Neil Shafer, a researcher and author of catalogs of scrip and money-substitutes.
When cash is scarce, such scrip is readily accepted by tradesmen.
Communities facing this problem have traditionally resorted to "scrip, " a money substitute in the form of tokens, certificates, even clamshells or buckskin to trade for goods.
Miners and lumberjacks could use the scrip at the company store--often the only store in town--or redeem the tokens for cash, at a steep 25% discount.
Companies used scrip for payroll in lieu of cash, which was difficult and dangerous to transport into the remote towns and lumber camps where everyone lived and worked.
It seems unlikely scrip will make a widespread comeback now that the age of credit and debit cards is upon us, says Leonard of the Chicago Coin Club.
There is little evidence of widespread scrip use (or any, for that matter) in the area around New Orleans since it was slammed by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last fall.
It was a time when phrases like "scrip, " "black lung" and "mining disaster" fell from the lips of workers, wives and children like the tar-colored dust that settled on their windowsills.
In desperation, individuals turned to scrip during the bank panics of 1893, 1907 and 1933, when towns, schools and other government bodies issued large paper certificates that could be used as cash substitutes.
Mario Blejer, who was Argentina's central-bank governor in the middle of the crisis, says that resorting to scrip would be even worse than creating a new currency outright (which he thinks would be disastrous).
Merchants would accept scrip, also at a sharp discount of 25% to 40%, and then redeem the scrip at full value at the company store for goods they could then resell in their stores.
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