Money Matters

Currency

The currency of the United States can be traced back to 1690 before the birth of the country, when the region was still a patchwork of colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony used paper notes to finance military expeditions. On April 2, 1792, the United States Congress created the United States dollar as the country's standard unit of money.

Current exchange (01Aug) is approx. 1 EUR = 1.02 USD / 0.98 EUR = 1 USD

Cash versus Plastic

There are almost as many Americans as there are checking accounts – more than 300 million, noting that debit card, credit cards, and prepaid cards constitute 60% of all payments. Nowadays however, smartphones are replacing plastic cards quickly.

It may sound all the stranger that the United States at the same time also still one of the few countries that still relies heavily on checks as payment. The American wrote, on average, 38 checks in 2015. That might sound small, but the checks add up: In 2016, the total number of checks written by businesses or individuals totalled 21 billion checks.

So, what does one use cash for? Mostly for tipping… which we will dedicate another post to!