Eurocheque
The European cheque scheme in which a bank card guaranteed the cheque, letting tourists pay in local currency abroad long before card terminals arrived.
The scheme launched in 1969 as a joint effort by European banks. Customers got a chequebook and an ec card, and the card number was written on the back of each cheque. That made the bank guarantee payment up to a fixed amount per cheque, for a long time 400 marks in West Germany. Cheques were written in the local currency and converted afterwards, so travellers could leave both traveller's cheques and wads of cash at home.
The guarantee ended at the close of 2001, just ahead of the euro, by which point the cheques were already fading. The organisation behind them had been folded into Europay, which merged with Mastercard in 2002. The ec brand lived on in Germany as the name of the bank card, and Germans still call a girocard an "EC-Karte".