You write a check to your buddy Edwuster Weeblewizzle. He deposits it. The money moves out of your account and into his. But how does the bank know where to get your money from?
The routing information.
On every check, there's routing information (including the routing symbol) that shows where the money for the check is supposed to come from.
The routing number identifies the bank. Then there's your bank account number, which shows what account at the bank has the money meant to cover the check. Then there's the check number, which helps track the check.
Edwuster's bank uses this info to pinpoint where the money comes from. Some computers talk to each other, and boom...Eddie gets his money. Excellent. No angry phone calls from Eddie.
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Finance: What is a CUSIP Number?119 Views
Finance, a la shmoop. What is a CUSIP number? Close that's a Cusack number
867-53-09, yeah we know there. So yeah you know when you go to the grocery
store and the cashier swipes your apples eight times across that little bar code [Apple being scanned]
reader thingy and it doesn't work again and again and again and then she finally [Error coming up on the screen]
pulls back the plastic from where the Apple was tagged hunts for her glasses [Cashier putting on her glasses]
and then visually finds the number associated with that Apple and then just
manually types it in. Well that's the fruit equivalent of a CUSIP number [Guy talking in a supermarket]
A CUSIP number is well just that only applied to securities, stocks, bonds even
muni bonds. CUSIP stands for committee on uniforms security identification [The meaning of each letter is shown]
procedures, and is basically just the serial number system of securities, but [CUSIP definition written on a 100 dollar bill]
has nine digits, the first six represent the original issuer of the security like
coca-cola shares when it went public a gazillion years ago. Then the next two [The fix 6 digits are highlighted]
characters refer to that type of security at hand like is it a basic
equity bond, muni bond and the ninth digit is riboflavin yeah it's just there
to be sure the other digits are all accurate and assures that there's no [The 3 digits meaning are shown]
replication in any of the other CUSIP index number sets. So yeah CUSIP numbers
make the securities easier to track because it's awfully hard to get a
microchip into one of them. [Microchip pulled out of a bond certificate]
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You've seen routing numbers on checks before, but what do they actually do? Hit play to find out.