Commercial banknotes?

Factual Questions
1

In another thread about whether merchants had the right to
refuse bills larger than a twenty, someone quoted this law:
A.The pertinent portion of law that applies to your question is the Coinage Act of 1965, specifically Section 102. This is now found in section 392 of Title 31 of the United States Code. The law says that: “All coins and currencies of the United States (including Federal Reserve notes and **circulating notes of ** Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations) . . . shall be legal-tender for all debts, public and private, public charges, taxes, duties and dues.”

“National bank notes” were issued between 1863 and 1935. They were much like today’s Federal Reserve Notes except that they carried the stamp of the commercial bank that issued them rather than that of the local Federal Reserve Bank. The federal government provided standard forms for
all denominations which the banks had to use. After they were stamped with the bank’s name, they were legal tender.

Theoretically, could a commercial national bank, like Wells Fargo, still issue its own banknotes, or is it verboten?
The language of the law above seems to imply that it could,
unless it was intended merely to include any such notes from
before 1935 that were still outstanding?

2

Yes and no (boy, don’t you love definitive answers like that?)

A bank cannot issue legal tender. However, a lot of banks (we won’t try to define “bank” narrowly or legalisticly here) do issue their own forms of currency, usually referred to as “credit cards”, “debit cards”, “charge cards”, and “travellers’ checks”. On the Web, you also have Beenz, various representations of gold, and other stuff that I can’t remember off the top of my head.

They key thing is none of these, as I say, are legal tender. Could the Last National Bank of Podunk issue its own banknotes? Sure. Would they be legal tender? No. Regardless of that fact, would it be a good idea to accept them anyway? Let me research the L.N.B. of Podunk, and I’ll get back to you on that one.