Leapfrogging into cashless tourism

The English word “cash” originates from the Chinese term for round copper coins, moving with traders physically all the way already from Han Dynasty China to the Roman Empire and linguistically from Tamil and Sanskrit to Old Italian to Old French to Middle English, reaching Germany in the form of “Käsch”.

In the 21^st century, Chinese outbound travellers became the preferred targets for pickpockets around the world. In addition to becoming increasingly conspicuous as they became the biggest international tourism source market globally in 2012, Chinese outbound travellers were also known to carry bundles of cash (not coins anymore, bills now) with them. In several well-documented cases the amounts in question reached high five-digit numbers in Euro or USD, prompting the Chinese government to issue travel warnings for specific destinations and official apologies by ambassadors in Beijing.

One reason might have been that the travellers were planning to spend large amounts on watches and jewellery or roulette chips with money of questionable origin. For most travellers, however, it was simply down to a lack of internationally-accepted credit cards as well as a tradition of cash payment, which let them take their money with them in this form[…]

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Image: COTRI