Checkless Society

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]