Global Currency

A single form of currency is accepted universally worldwide, regardless of political, social, or technological differences. No matter whether you're dealing with cavemen who speak in broken English or beings from another planet, your money is always good at face value. An almost ubiquitous trope in RPGs and in most other games involving some kind of economy.

The currency in question often has a generic name that implies no place of origin (often just "gold" in fantasy and almost always "credits" in science fiction) and as far as is observable by the player, is spontaneously generated in indefinite quantities within the game world rather than being minted or printed by a bank or government. Despite the fluid nature of this currency, it is seemingly immune to basic economic forces like inflation, supply and demand, devaluation, and Gresham's Law.^note "Bad money drives out good", e.g. if the government declares that gold coins and plastic coins are both worth $1, gold will drop out of circulation because people will keep it and spend plastic first. Also, when the currency is gold, people will have absolutely no problem carrying a large amount of it with them, even when the gold would be heavier than themselves.

The primary Global Currency Exception is when the designers will insert a region in which it isn't accepted to add difficulty to the later parts of the game.

This is an Acceptable Break From Reality and is often a key part of Easy Logistics—imagine how taxing it would be to spend time in video games changing from currency to currency. It can be justified by an Energy Economy, or coins minted out of valuable metal. Also, of course, it will be justified if there really is a One World Government, and/or some sufficiently powerful international organization that issues the currency.

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Examples:

Anime and Manga

• Woolongs in Cowboy Bebop, accepted throughout the Solar System.
  • Also used in Space☆Dandy, where they would appear to be accepted throughout the galaxy.
• Likewise Wongs, accepted throughout the galaxy in Outlaw Star.
• One Piece has one in the form of the "Beli". (Alternatively romanized as either Beri, Berry, or Belly depending on the translation.) Justified, since the world is dominated by the appropriately named World Government, which controls nearly every country on the planet to various extents. There are a few exceptions of countries not affiliated with the WG who use a different currency. One example is Skypiea, an island in the sky 10,000 meters above sea level that is very hard to get to. The currency used there is called the "Extol", which has an exchange rate of 10,000 Extol to 1 Beli. Another example is the isolationist, Wano Country, which utilizes a Gold–Silver–Copper Standard currency system.
• Rin in Tegami Bachi: Letter Bee.
• In the Robotech movie, not only was there a Global Dollar but a news reporter talks about it being devalued.
• Double-Dollars in Trigun.

Fan Works

• With Strings Attached
  • The Baravadans don't care that the four are using Ketafan money. That's because the continent is an anarchy, and the inhabitants seem to use money more out of habit than necessity.
  • On the other hand, the Hunter's world is more normal, and the big man expects to have to melt down the money he brought with him to C'hou, lest he be arrested. The four set him straight.
  • Although the issue is not explicitly raised when the four have to use their C'hovite currency in the shop at the Inn at the Gate, the Hunter notes that the shop caters to "unprepared, and shall we say, hurried travelers," so presumably they're used to unfamiliar coinage.
• In The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World, when Ringo is looking at a new Ketafan city for the first time, he reports that they're using the same money as that in Baravada, despite there apparently being two different governments. George immediately questions why this is possible; the two just chalk it up to “everything being crazy.”
• In I Am Skantarios, a young Skantarios is very angry that his nation has fallen so low as to use the currency of one of its enemies, the florin (a Gameplay and Story Integration moment, since that's Total War currency unit). Later on after the Byzantine Empire is back on its feet (and in fact kicking the ass of everything in its way), an older and wiser Skantarios keeps it out of convenience.
• In the crossover fic Colosseum of the Heart, Sora explains to Ash and friends that the munny he collects from the Heartless converts to whatever currency is used in the world he's visiting: "Don't ask me how it works, I don't know." As such, he has a fair bit of Poké as soon as he arrives in Orre.

Films—Animated

• In the animated film Starchaser: The Legend of Orin, currency is referred to as "starbacks."

Films—Live-Action

• The sci-fi comedy Galaxina (1980) had "Earth Yen."
• In John Wick, special golden coins are a global currency accepted by the criminal underworld. They can be used to access posh safe house hotels, get into the local Bad Guy Bar, pay a corpse-disposal service to remove the inconvenient remains of a bunch of assassins, and be traded between killers and criminals for favors.
• In Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist, power broker Jonathan Stonagal pushes for the world to accept Eden Pay as a form of one-world currency. Pastor Bruce Barnes equates this to being the forthcoming Mark of the Beast, as prophesied in Scripture.

Gamebooks

• The gamebook series Lone Wolf plays with this trope by having multiple currencies with fixed exchange rates, almost always given and used in multiples equal to an integer amount of gold crowns (the protagonist's "home" currency). For instance, 4 lunes equal 1 gold crown, so most amounts of lune given are multiples of 4, and the exchange rate is usually given, as in "32 Lune (8 Gold Crowns)." Also, 4 lunes take up the same amount of inventory space as 1 gold crown in the given rules despite lunes being silver, so the game implies that silver, gold, and iron all have the same value!
• Meanwhile, the open-world gamebook The Fabled Lands subverts it: trying to pay the Fair Folk with human money will result in you being unceremoniously picked up by a horde of terrifying goblins and hauled into the underworld, never to be seen again upon the surface.

Literature

• In David Wingrove's Chung Kuo series, the Chinese yuan is now the global currency.
• Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series: For the most part, credits can be used across the galaxy, with no concern for who printed the currency. In the Prequel novels and in "The Psychohistorians", this makes sense because the only government is the Empire, so it would want its currency accepted in every part of the empire. However, as it decays and collapses, empire credits are accepted in fewer and fewer places. Intersystem trade moved to a barter system and each government had to mint their own money or function without a system of currency. By the time of "The General (Foundation)", the Privy Secretary is allowed to publish his own currency, separate from the Emperor's. By the time of "Search by the Foundation", Kalgan uses "Kalganids". When money is discussed in Foundation's Edge, only Foundation credits are mentioned (Sayshell presumably uses a different currency, but the narration doesn’t mention what sort of currency they use). At this point, the Foundation is so powerful, refusing their money would effectively place your own government in a state of economic sanctions.
• Discworld has many currencies, but outside the Agatean Empire, the Ankh-Morpork dollar is accepted everywhere "because Ankh-Morpork is the only place with anything worth buying." Areas like Lancre and the Chalk don't seem to bother having their own currency; if you're buying something from outside the area you use AM$, and within the area you barter.
• Played with in Star Wars books: There are Republic credits and Imperial Credits.
  • At one point in The Thrawn Trilogy, Luke needs to help two arguing people settle a dispute and has to ask for the exchange rate between the two currencies.
  • In the X-Wing Series, a captured Imperial scientist makes a deal for her cooperation, and insists on being paid in Imperial credits, despite being asked Are You Sure You Want to Do That? As a result of carrying that much Imperial currency, she's arrested for treason.
• In William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy the globe works on a digital economy with various currencies, however a global black market physical currency exists in the form of New Yen. Apparently they are very illegal in Japan.
• Last Legionary: Credits crop up as a Galactic standard currency in Douglas Hill's scifi series.
• The Left Behind series uses this.
  • With the one-world government being set up, Nicolae Carpathia standardizes the currency of the world, first reducing it to the Euro for Europe and Africa, the Yen for Asia, and the Dollar for the Americas and Australia, and then finally reducing it to just the dollar, renamed the Nick (after himself). It quickly allows for him to get the world's governments under his control with a semi-communist approach to government.
  • Eventually, the Mark of Loyalty utilizes a credit system that makes all cash simply pieces of paper or bits of metal, and the currency is done away with.
  • In Kingdom Come, we are given a little quip about how the protagonists are wondering what currency the Millennial Kingdom will be run on, but the mystery is never shared with the readers. Though it appears there is no currency, and everyone gives and does out of the goodness of their hearts.
• Toyed with in His Dark Materials when Lyra tries to use a solid gold coin, standard currency in her world, to buy a chocolate bar in Will's. The cashier is somewhat confused, but accepts it.
• Played with to several ends in one of The Belgariad prequels—when Polgara needs to buy a horse from a Sendarian farmer, the only money she has on her dates from the long-since-destroyed Vo Wacune. While the farmer agrees that the silver is more important than the face stamped on it, Polgara gives him a couple extra coins to cover any difference between the weight of the ancient coins and that of modern coinage.
• The Stormlight Archive: Every country we see uses spheres as currency. Spheres are small glass marbles with slivers of gemstones of various sizes suspended in them. These are important because gemstones are the only things that can hold Stormlight. In theory, spheres are valuable because Soulcasters can use the contained light to transform anything into anything else, but in practice Soulcasters are so rare that spheres are never used in this way. Soulcasters typically use larger gems designed specifically for their purposes instead. The value of spheres also depends on the gemstone used. In order, they are diamonds, garnets (worth five diamonds), rubies (worth 10 diamonds), sapphires (worth twenty-five diamonds), and emeralds (worth fifty diamonds). Diamonds are the least valuable because they can only create glass, while emeralds are the most valuable because they can create food. Further, the gems are divided into the smallest chips, the medium-sized marks (worth five chips), and large broams (worth twenty chips). So the denominations go all the way from diamond chips, which can buy some bread, to emerald broams, worth a thousand times that. Gems are also implied to be valuable because they are one of only two substances (the other being aluminum) that can't be created by Soulcasters.

Live-Action TV

• Babylon 5:
  • While each race has its own currency, the human Credit and Centauri Ducat are the only currencies known to be in use aboard the station. The former is due to the station being built and run by EarthGov, and the latter because the Centauri Republic is an old, well-established star nation and as a hard currency backed by a precious metal instead of the electronic-based Credit it's more difficult to track when used in shady deals.
  • The Credit skirts a bit the trope, as the member states of Earth Alliance often have their own currencies such as the "Northam Dollar". The exact relationship between the Credit and the other Earth Alliance currencies is unclear, but the Credit is accepted everywhere in the Alliance and is the only currency officially used in places under direct EarthGov control, such as the station.
• The Federation in the Star Trek franchise uses credits when needing some sort of currency to trade with other civilizations. Outside Federation space, however, gold pressed latinum is the de facto currency—particularly among the Ferengi, due in part to the fact that latinum can't be made by a replicator.
• In the Sid and Marty Krofft series H.R. Pufnstuf, the people (or whatever...) of Living Island use "buttons" as currency.
• The Sliders crew didn't seem to have much of a problem with spending cash for supplies across dimensions, which made sense in that they moved between alternate versions of the same place. An exception happened in the first episode, where their attempts to use normal money instead of that particular world's red-tinted "commiebucks" almost get them killed. In cases where an alternate reality California isn't part of the United States, they have used silver (and presumably gold) as currency.
• The "dollarpound" (or "quidbuck," if you're in a hurry) from Red Dwarf, although early episodes used pounds.
• Firefly primarily makes use of Alliance credits, though this is because the Alliance controls most of the human-inhabited space. There is also mention of people trading in platinum instead of credits, with Simon mentioning the different values of the medicine in his bag in terms of both credits and platinum. Dollars and cents are mentioned in the episode Jaynestown (in the Ballad of Jayne Cobb).
• Almost Human has Bitcoin, a Real Life decentralized, digital currency that became more popular in the future.
• Continuum appears to have at least two currencies in the future: "Bit Currency," which seems to be some variation of Bitcoin and is used by people in the underground economy, and "Life Credits," which apparently are the official currency of at least the North American Union; in the one episode both currencies are mentioned, the exchange rate appears to be 1-to-1.
• The Space Empire Zangyack in Kaizoku Sentai Gokaiger enforces the use of the Zagin amongst its conquered planets, which is also the basis of the Gokaigers' bounties. However, Earth remains unconquered and retains use of all its contemporary currencies, such that 1 Zagin can be exchanged for 360 Japanese yen.

Religion

• In Revelation 13:16-17, as part of the tribulation facing mankind in the End Times, the Beast will force everyone to receive a mark on their right hands or on their foreheads, and no one will be able to conduct business without the mark. This "Mark of the Beast" has been subject to much speculation. One interpretation is that it's not a literal mark on the hand or forehead, but a symbol that has to appear in some manner in all monetary transactions. A worldwide single currency would fit the bill for such a symbol.
  • The mark is usually interpreted as a sort of chip that is inserted under the skin, and is to be used as an electronic form of ID and credit card. As a matter of fact, the Verichip Corporation had developed such a chip (for storing and sharing medical information, so far), which is usually inserted in the upper right arm, between the shoulder and elbow.
  • Note that this is part of a particular minority view of Eschatology that while popular amongst Evangelical Protestants, is almost unheard of amongst Eastern/Oriental Orthodox, Mainline Protestant (Anglican, Lutheran, Methodist, Reformed etc.) or Roman Catholic Christians/Theologians. Most Christians globally interpret the Revelation to John in more symbolic/historical manner, reflecting the ongoing persecution of early Christians under Pagan Rome. The Number of the Beast is often understood in light of letter/number substitution to be a veiled allusion to Caesar.

Roleplay

• A Geek's Guide: DeathWorld Earth has the classic "Credits" act as a global currency, and is predominantly used by the very rich.

Tabletop Games

• In Dungeons & Dragons, the base unit of currency everywhere is the gold piece (gp). Acquire gold pieces from a street vendor in Greyhawk, and you can spend those same coins in a shop half way around the world without anyone batting an eye. Some DMs attempt to justify this, and the Dungeon Master's Guide has recommendations for different monetary systems that may come up. As one might expect, most DMs just stick to generic gold pieces.
  • Although currencies are generally global (probably based on the intrinsic value of the material itself; the listed weight of a gp varies by edition, typically 10 gp per pound in older editions and 50 gp per pound in newer), this isn't necessarily true from one world to the next. The world of Krynn in the "Dragonlance" setting uses steel pieces rather than gold. The change in the weight of the coin seems largely to address certain logistical challenges in hauling large sums out of dungeons.
  • The 4th Edition rulebook explains that those "GP," "SP," etc. were the coins used by the last great empire to fall, which makes them acceptable in most lands formerly ruled by it. Though you might think a fallen empire's currency would be worth practically nothing without a governing body to back the currency and give the people faith in it, it's reasonable to assume that the now-independent states have started issuing their own currencies based on the old money and still honor it as a commodity currency (i.e. it's worth X amount of goods because the coin itself is worth X amount, not because the government says it is).
  • The Dark Sun setting has very little metal; "coins" are still issued in the familiar GP/SP/CP denominations, but they're a fiat currency (made of ceramic) backed by the city-state that issued them, and it's up to the DM what a coin from City-State A is worth in City-State B at any given moment. There's some trade between the cities, so with a little work you should be able to find someone to exchange them for you, but not for free. However, anyone will happily take actual metal coins at full value, should you happen to be so lucky as to come across some.
  • As noted below under Planescape: Torment, in the Planescape setting, silver and gold are accepted across multiple planes of existence because they're silver and gold, which even the gods value. If you start getting fussy about whose face is stamped on the coins, then you're letting money walk out on you. Various fan sites (including the once very popular Mimir site) presented possible extra currencies with varying exchange rates around the planes in an attempt to make things more interesting.
• Every version of Munchkin measures the value of treasure items in "gold pieces" and not just the original D&D parody, Star Munchkin, Munchkin Cthulhu... all of them. Presumably to avoid rules-lawyering when decks are combined.
• In Classic Traveller, the Imperial credit was accepted throughout the interstellar Imperium, which was made up of thousands of planets in an area hundreds of light years across.
  • And a mild aversion: physical money in the Imperium has the bank of issuance printed on it. If one sector's economy starts to collapse, the Imperium can simply declare money from that area invalid, thus firewalling the problem.
• The Star Ace game featured a not-all-the-way-to-war between the Empire and the Alliance (it's a game from the 80s, so just think original Star Wars). Both use the same currency. Granted, this is a game setting where all money is solid metal coins, so as long as everyone agrees on how valuable the metal is...
• In Cyberpunk 2020 the most common worldwide currency (and the only one mentioned in the base materials) is the eurodollar, commonly shortened to euro or eddie. There is a throwaway line in the CP2020 core rulebook about 2 US dollars equaling 1 eurobuck (eb). Meanwhile, the Pacific Rim sourcebook implies yen and yuan are still minted but East Asia still recognizes eurobucks as the fiat currency.
• In Shadowrun the civilized Sixth World's economies are standardized around the Japanese nuyen, which is controlled by Zurich-Orbital Gemeinschaftbank. Various books do mention the existence of other currencies (and even give common exchange rates) such as the UCAS and CAS dollars, the Aztlan peso, and various internal currencies issued by the megacorps, but all are valued against the nuyen. Like a number of items in Shadowrun's setting, the nuyen is a nod to William Gibson, specifically the Sprawl Trilogy.
• Played with 7th Sea. The Vendel have introduced the Guilder, a universal currency. It is also the first paper currency, enabling people to carry more of it at once. All rule-supported prices are listed in Guilders. However, the Vesten and Vodacce, the Vendel's most bitter enemies, refuse to accept the Guilder in order to undermine the Vendel.
• BattleTech
  • Early editons had this happen on two levels; on the first, most planets in the Inner Sphere rarely printed their own money, and instead used the "House Bills" printed by their ruling Successor State. One notable exception to this was Solaris VII, a Bread and Circuses type of world centered around Gladiator Games. There is common mention of 'Solaris scrip,' suggesting that there was enough of a market in betting to support the value of said scrip.
  • On a far grander level, there is the Comstar Bill, or C-Bill, which is issued by the secretive and technophilic Comstar, redeemable for one second of transmission time on their hyperpulse generators. The ubiquity of Comstar, their HPGs, and the necessity for rapid interstellar communication means that C-Bills are distinctly favored over the aforementioned House Bills and are accepted by practically everyone involved in some sort of trade. The number of sourcebooks printing equipment, service, and Battlemech costs in C-Bills should say something about the currency's influence in the setting. House Bills, by contrast, are given an exchange rate with C-Bills and each other in only a handful of the sourcebooks. Eventually subverted, as the HPG network collapsed for unknown reasons in 3132 and C-Bills became nearly useless as a result. The resulting chaos caused massive economic flux across the Inner Sphere and by 3145 the closest thing to a universal currency that exists is ammunition, as autocannon rounds and missiles remain consistently useful.
• Subverted in The Witcher: Game of Imagination. Even if all prices are given in specific currency, they are directly followed with exchange rates, as most of nations mint their own money. Most of them are also using coins of different values, rarely following decimal system. International trade is calculated in weight of pure silver. And while money of other nations can be accepted in bigger cities, players can be denied services or goods if they don't use local currency or bullion. It also often leads to the situation where small amount of currency A can be worth more than entire bag of currency B. In fact, receiving bullion is the most convinient way of being paid and transporting large sums. Also, the game makes a good use of medieval bank cheques and bills of sale.
• In Fading Suns the emperor issues "firebirds" minted from a metal only found on the Imperial Capital. Most Houses also issue their own currencies that are usually exchangeable on a 5:1 or 10:1 basis.
• Most banks in Eclipse Phase use the purely electronic "credit," though there are some minor factions that issue their own currencies, and others such as Titan and the Anarchists do without money entirely.
• In Mutant Chronicles there are six major currencies, as the five corporations and the Brotherhood all mint their own. However, Brotherhood "Cardinal's Crowns" are the de facto universal currency. All inter-corporate deals are made in Crowns, and all stores will have prices marked in Crowns and the currency of the corporation which owns the store. Conversely, no-one outside Cybertronic will accept Cybertronic's piastres, and no-one except a few Mishima-owned banks will touch Mishiman dubloons.
• Exalted,
  • Jade^note Not actually the same jade as Real Life. has the Real Life economic properties of gold. The Realm has its reserve of jade and prints money with it as the backing. You never actually buy things with physical jade, unless you're embargoed by the Realm. Jade is accepted nearly everywhere in Creation, even in areas fully independent from Realm's iron-grip. Other currencies do exist (salt, seashells), and they can be converted to Realm's money, generally at a rate that will never allow them to truly prosper.
  • Between The Fair Folk though, the global currency is mortals. Or rather, mortals' dreams, represented by their Virtues trait. The Fair Folk can trivially create gold and other non-magical prized substances and the slave trade between the Guild and the Fair Folk is one of the most profitable in Creation.
• In GURPS, while all prices are listed in dollars, the Basic Set does mention that this is just a convention to make determining costs easier and encourages game masters to change to authentic currency when it would make sense or add realism. The Pulp Weapons sourcebooks even give prices in authentic 1930s dollar amounts and gives a quick formula for changing prices in other sourcebooks to match the inflation in modern days.
• In d20 Modern, money is abstracted to a "Purchasing Power" mechanic, to represent physical cash, credit cards, checks, and so on. There's never a problem with using purchasing power, regardless of where you're physically located.
• Most Warhammer 40,000 works use "credits," though given the problematic nature of interplanetary commerce it's safe to assume they use local currencies. Fanon in particular replaces the gold coins of fantasy with "thrones."
  • Thrones gelt are the canon unit of currency in the Calixis Sector, the default setting of Dark Heresy, with mention of other systems on other worlds in the sector. Later games in the line, which deal with immeasurably wealthy interstellar merchants and privateers, Space Marine special forces, soldiers of the Imperial Guard, and barbarian champions of Chaos, none of which tend to actually care about the prices of goods and services, use mechanics that abstract the economics of the game.
  • The Imperium of Man also doesn't really care about what the planetary governments (or whatever tribe was winning the last day Imperial officials visited)really does economically which can range anywhere from tribal bartering to free market or state controlled: All the Adeptus Administratum requires of its Governors (which is the only title it cares about whether or not said Governor has any other titles internally) is that they make sure the Imperial Cult is worshipped and the Imperial Tithe of resources and/or manpower is paid on time.
• In Myriad Song the Imperial Monetary Note is the standard measurement of wealth accepted just about anywhere, even though the Syndicate that originally printed them has fallen and the Remanence that still prints them has virtually no allies. A number of independent worlds have their own scrip that is rarely any good beyond that planet, and the Concord and Solar Creed are both attempting an Energy Economy (with a 100:1 exchange rate with the Note).
• The game Witch Hunter: the Invisible World throws its hands up in the air and decides tales of terror in its setting of late 17th century alternate Earth don't need to be bogged down in how many ounces of gold to the guilder and whether the colony of Virginia has bank notes yet. The universal currency, "Resources," assumes that during downtime, a Witch Hunter is taking care of such trivial matters as exchanging currencies, bartering with his or her neighbors, and so on.
• Crimestrikers has the SIMU (Standard International Monetary Unit), which is accepted all over Creaturia.
• Numenera prices everything in "shins," the common term for a variety of currencies of roughly comparable value across the Ninth World. All currencies are fiat currencies as the advanced capabilities of previous worlds made almost any rare material abundant (including gold and precious gems, which are probably found in almost any old relic, and there are a lot of those), so most coinage is whatever the local government cares to mint. It's mentioned that some regions may only accept local currency, but as far as the game's rules are concerned, they're all shins.
• Flying Circus zig-zags this; each town issues its own form of currency, abstracted away mechanically as "scrip", whilst trading companies handle transactions between towns via gold coins called Thaler.

Video Games

• System Shock 2 has nanites, packages of Nanomachines used as currency. They're possibly the most extreme version of this trope, as not only are they used everywhere, but they are used for everything, from buying stuff from vending machines (which build the product out of the nanites) to fighting viruses in the bloodstream. Further, nanites can be created from everything, including the junk you find laying around and corpses.
• In Gran Turismo, the Cr. varies between regions because it's to simulate the local region coin. In the US, credits have their amount of 0s lowered in order to simulate the dollar (The same thing happens in the Europe version). As such, in the US and PAL versions, the player will start with 10.000 Cr., while in the Japanese Version however he will start with 1.000.000 Cr..
• Gold coins in most fantasy games. Now, this is justified as long as the materials of the coins are intrinsically valuable to all sides concerned. Historically, coins have often been regarded as conveniently pre-measured amounts of gold or silver: such old units as shekel, mina, and talent were measurements of weight at least as much as currency.^note  See also: 1 (British) pound sterling=1 pound of sterling silver An unknown coin might be accepted after a trip to the scales, without regard to what shape it's in or whose portrait is stamped on it. A well-trusted coin would simply assure the recipient that it wasn't made of cheap alloy.
• Planescape: Torment deserves special notice as using copper as the base of the economy... and doing so across multiple planes of existence. Explained in the Planescape tabletop RPG books that copper, silver, and gold coins are... well, copper, silver, and gold. Money's flowing to and from everywhere, especially through Sigil, so that it's pointless to even try to care about the face stamped on the coinage. Thus, it's advised in the books that while it may be fun to hassle players once or twice about how the coins from their homeworld are "too small," and given a surcharge by greedy merchants, for the most part it should be taken as given that your money will be good anywhere.
• Gil or GP (depending on the translation) in the Final Fantasy games and many other games by Square Enix and its predecessors.
  • Exception: Final Fantasy VII uses gil everywhere but in Gold Saucer, which uses GP (won on the various rides, or bought from shady dealers).
  • Exception: Final Fantasy XI uses gil in most parts of Vanadiel except for some parts of the eastern empire of Aht Urghan. Many transactions that need to be made here can only be done with imperial currency and not gil.
  • It's done again in Wings of The Goddess, where most transactions in the Crystal War are done with Allied Notes, which are war bonds.
  • Exception: Final Fantasy XIV does use gil for regular vendors, but there's a tonze of other currency types that can only be used with certain people to purchase gear and other goods. Every beast tribe have their own currency, the Gold Saucer uses Manderville Gold Saucer Points (or MGP), retainers are paid with Venture tokens, each Grand Company has their own seals for currency, vendors related to hunts use their own seals for currency, scrips are used for exchanging gear and materials for crafters and gatherers, and the endgame equipmen can only be bought with Allagan Tomestones of different varieties. Also, for the most part, XIV does go out of its way to justify why the regular vendors will accept your Eorzean gil regardless of where they are:
    • Ishgard and Ala Mhigo were both part of the Eorzean Alliance in the pastand rejoin after the events of Heavensward and Stormblood, respectively. Ishgard still does business with Eorzean traders, and most of the vendors in Ala Mhigo are Resistance-allied rather than selling on behalf of the Garlean Empire.
    • There are two specific discussions on this front in regards to the Far East. Kugane is a port which receives customers from all over, and as such are willing to accept all custom; meanwhile, Confederate fellows mention that foreign currency is in demand in their circles.
    • On the First, which is in desperately trying to avert an Umbral Calamity and its own destruction, traditional currencies are fricked, and everyone has started basing coins on their metal value; "gil" has become the term of choice, having been appropriated from documents in the Crystal Tower (which itself came from Eorzea via Timey-Wimey Ball). By Contrived Coincidence, gil coins from Eorzea are minted such that their metal value on the First is equivalent to their printed value. Given the Crystal Exarch who orchestrated the aforementioned Timey-Wimey Ball is an Eorzean native, it's implied he did this on purpose.
    • Sharlayan previously had a colony in Eorzea, was considered one of Eorzea's city-states at the time, and still maintains regular contact with Eorzea despite having abandoned the colony since before the Empire showed up.
  • Exception: Final Fantasy XV predominantly uses gil, but judging by how Prompto wonders in the first chapter of the game what a "gil" is and surmises that their own money isn't good from now on, it's safe to conclude that Insomnia has its own currency. Fortunately, Hammerhead accepts payments in Crown City currency, so the game starting with a broken-down car only lasts long enough for the combat tutorials. Unfortunately, Cid Sophiar is The Scrooge, and leaves the entourage broke before they can even consider exchanging it; Noctis starts with a 1000-gil down payment on a monster-hunting job for Cindy. Also, similar to the Gold Saucer example above, medals are used as a replacement for chips in order to buy prizes from betting in the Totomostro games in Altissia.
• Rupees in The Legend of Zelda series, although in most games you're usually only in one country for the duration of the adventure, so it's not as noticeable. Still, the games that do take place in different countries and lands, such as Majora's Mask (Termina) and The Wind Waker (the Great Sea), still use rupees for currency. The exceptions include:
  • The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons, which features an underground area called Subrosia. Rupees are useless there. The only currency usable there is Ore Chunks. Its sibling game, Oracle of Ages remains the same in the future kingdom of Labrynna with no alterations to currency whatsoever over a period of a few hundred years.
  • Also of note is The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures, where Force Gems are used instead.
  • In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Kilton doesn't accept rupees as payment for his wares, but rather his own currency called "mon". The only way to get any mon is to sell him monster parts.
• Imperial Credits are used EVERYWHERE in Star Wars: Empire at War. Even planets without populations and no obvious source of income (Endor, Yavin IV, Hoth, etc.) pay to the player the same type of Credits.
• Meseta in the Phantasy Star series. So far it's been the staple currency of every game, regardless of whether it takes place in the Algo System or somewhere else entirely.
• Zenny in numerous Capcom games, most notably Breath of Fire. (Of course, "zeni" is just a slightly archaic Japanese word for "money.")
• Gets odd in the Mega Man Legends series; despite being tens of thousands of years into the future from any other Capcom games, the currency is still Zenny. Justified, however, that said "Zenny" is that In Name Only and is actually refractor shards which, like gold, are intrinsically valuable. The currency has changed, the name just hasn't. Mega Man Battle Network also uses zenny as the name of its currency.
• Ragnarok Online also uses Zenny. Even odder here as as the player is able to visit at least two different neighboring nations, as well as the civilization other planes of existence entirely. (The manhwa RO is based on, by contrast, demonstrated the existence of multiple currencies at several points during its run.)
• Tree of Savior's world uses Silver (as in silver pieces) for all monetary concerns. (This is not factoring in the Microtransaction currency.)
• The game series Fallout has different uses of this trope:
  • The first Fallout featured bottle caps as the currency of choice in the wasteland. Done for stylistic reasons, although the later supplemental Fallout Bible provided a justification in that they the were backed by the water merchants (who controlled the most valuable commodity in the game's post apocalyptic world).
  • In the sequel Fallout 2, which takes place 80 years later and features a much more civilized post-apocalyptic world, bottle caps have become obsolete and have been replaced by generic "money" (later established as being New California Republic Dollars) used by everyone, including factions opposed to the New California Republic.
  • Since Fallout Tactics took place in a completely different part of the former United States (the midwest rather than the west coast) it featured ring pulls as the local informal currency.
  • Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel and Fallout 3 returned to bottle caps, despite taking place in different regions (Texas and the District of Columbia, respectively), with no real justification other than Rule of Cool and due to bottle caps having become a signature element of the series.
  • Fallout: New Vegas
    • Each of the major factions use a different currency, although bottle caps returns as the default and most commonly used one. In fact, NCR dollars and Legion coinage (the aureus and denarius) can't actually be used as currency: you need to exchange them for caps if you want to use them in a purchase, which is done by treating NCR and Legion money as a miscellaneous item that you sell to the merchants in return for usable money.
    • The casinos however will accept and pay out NCR and legion money, though at lower rates than the 1:1 for caps. Since these are fixed rates and the casinos don't run out of chips this can be useful for characters with low barter to launder faction money into caps. Pillaging legion denarii and then going on a gambling spree with casino chips bought with them is a delicious irony since the Legion detests such "profligacy".
• The Elder Scrolls
  • Throughout the series, "Septims" are the official currency of Tamriel. Named for the ruling Septim dynasty of the Third Tamriellic Empire (Justifying the trope), Septims are gold coins depicting Tiber Septim, founder of the Third Empire on the heads side and the Imperial Dragon symbol on the tails side (which gives them their slang name of "drakes").
  • It's not explained how coins found in ancient ruins that predate the Septim dynasty are usable in trade as though they are Septims themselves, though it is likely just a simplification; presumably, any such coins are valued to the Septim and traded accordingly. (There are mods that change these generic modern coins to lore-friendly ancient ones.)
  • Morrowind:
    • Lampshaded by the nomadic barbarian "Ashlanders", who consider the more "civilized" folk to be foolish for willingly trading useful items in exchange for small chunks of metal with no practical use. Of course, their traders still accept them too—they know you aren't the only fool around!
    • The game also has ancient Dwemer coins, which don't fit under the aforementioned "simplification" and are treated as items to be sold. There seem to be two reasons for this, however — one, in-universe, Dwemer items are technically restricted items owned by the Emperor, and the Empire of Morrowind's time is somewhat more capable of enforcing such laws than in later games as it descends toward vestigial status. Two, the game mechanics would screw up the 'make some of them cursed' trick. Due to how gold and items are implemented, making cursed coinage makes it a separate item, IE non-stacking even after the curse has run its course. This means that the cursed gold would have to be manually sold anyway.
  • This trope being played straight is somewhat more noticeable in Skyrim, where Windhelm, the seat of the Stormcloak rebellion, will still accept the Septim coinage at the exact same prices as everywhere else. Perhaps justified in how Jarl Ulfric Stormcloak is not the kind of guy who would want to mess with the economy.
• All nations in Squaresoft's Secret of Mana operate on a single currency, even though two are at war with each other and a few others are cut off from conventional trade routes.
• In Secret of Evermore, a Spiritual Sequel to the Mana series, the four regions that make up Evermore have their own currency and will not accept money from other lands. However, the exchange rate between currencies remains fixed throughout the game: 2 Talons = 1 Gem, 2 Gems = 1 Gold Coin, and 1 Gold Coin = 8 Credits (but you have to find the moneychanger first).
• Red Dead Redemption: The only currency in the game is dollars, even though part of the map is in Mexico. Of course, given that Mexico is in the middle of the Revolution at the time of the game, American dollars are presumably worth far more at the moment.
• Subverted in Shin Megami Tensei. During the first half of the game, which takes place in Tokyo, you use Yen. But when a cataclysmic event throws you into an After the End future, you discover that in this Scavenger World, your Yen are as worthless as the paper they're printed on.
  • Later referenced again in Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne. For one Fetch Quest you're asked to retrieve a 1000 Yen Bill: the smallest amount of paper currency in Japan, but After the End an incredibly rare, valuable collector's item.
  • The replacement currency, Macca, is not only legal tender on Earth, but in the Abyss as well (in SMT2). It's quite justified, though: it's the preferred currency of demons. Since Earth is at the time of each game suffering from large demonic invasions, Macca becomes a hot commodity. It's because of this than both the Eastern Kingdom of Mikado and Tokyo in Shin Megami Tensei IV both use Macca for transactions. Curiously, Macca's minted exclusively by Lucifuge Refocale, one of Lucifer's minions. Money might not be the root of all evil, but...
• In SaGa Frontier, "credits" are used as a universal currency, but you are also able to buy gold bars. There is a famous glitch that lets you make obscene amounts of money through manipulation of the gold market, dubbed "Takeonomics" after its discoverer.
• Princess Tomato in the Salad Kingdom ignores this trope by giving the player gold at several turns... but making the gold almost useless. On the few occasions you do need money, the gold needs to be traded in for proper currency.
• Avoided in Ultima VII Part II: Serpent Isle, where in addition to gold coins, each of the three cities featured in the game have their own currency. While some merchants accept payment in more than one currency, none accept all, and some characters exchange the various currencies at variable rates.
• "Munny" in the Kingdom Hearts series's multiverse-spanning economy. Its name appears to be a reference to Winnie the Pooh, in which Pooh consistently spells honey as "hunny" on his various jars and pots. Makes sense when you think that almost all the stores are run by the same pan-dimensional species of unbelievably masterful blacksmiths (and the ones that don't tend to have Moogles nearby anyway).
• Sierra's Space Quest series had "Buckazoids," a currency that was accepted not only everywhere in the universe, but everywhere in time when one of the games sent the hero time traveling.
• Mother:
  • EarthBound uses dollars for every single place you go — a foreign country on a mountaintop, a village in a swamp, or even in a tiny village in an underworld full of dinosaurs! There's only one shop in the game where dollars aren't used, and that's in Tenda Village. The shopkeeper trades items for Horns of Life. At least in Dallam (that is, the mountaintop country) stores specifically advertise the fact that they accept Dollars. It's good business to cater to those tourists, you know!
  • In Mother 3, there is no currency for half of the game, and trade relies on bartering for items with things like rotten éclairs. After the midway point, money is introduced into the world in the form of Dragon Points, which are accepted all over the Nowhere Islands, even on an island mostly isolated from the rest of society. This may also be commentary about the evils of money, since this currency is introduced by the antagonists, and it is at this time when the game's world begins to get screwed up.
• The fan Midquel MOTHER: Cogitive Dissonance has currency for multiple planets. The only exception is on Earth, where your money doesn't work and you have to fight the local enemies for Dollars.
• Bolts in Ratchet & Clank. Even when Ratchet leaves the Solana Galaxy to go to the Bogon and Polaris Galaxies, they still use Bolts as currency.
• Civilization universally uses "Gold." However, techs, units, etc., get more expensive as time goes on (i.e. inflation), and indeed "inflation" is a game mechanic in Civilization IV to keep your economy from getting too big.
  • Of course, a quick look at history shows that gold-standard economies experience very little inflation and prices in industrialized economies drop very rapidly without it.
  • After construction the New League of Nations, its Secretary-General can put up a vote for global currency, which increases commerce for all.
• Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri mentions the difficulty of founding a new economic system while settling a new planet. The world uses energy as a global currency, measured in energy credits. This works in much the same way as gold in Civilization, but one does get richer by settling high elevations and constructing solar collectors.
• Kingdom of Loathing uses meat. The creators say this was because they didn't have a picture of a pile of coins, but did have a picture of a piece of meat. It also works as a good Lampshade Hanging, as it makes more sense to be able to pull a fistful of meat off the corpse of a dead mammal than a fistful of dollars. However, outside the Seaside Town there are almost as many places that use their own local currency as there are places that use meat.
• Bells in Animal Crossing. Subverted by one of the messages the player may receive when searching a dresser in a neighbor's house: "You found 100 Rupees! But you can't use them here."
• Lampshaded in Chrono Trigger.
  • When the party travels to the distant future or the remote past, merchants don't recognize their money. (Although they end up taking it anyway. Gold's gold, no matter what funny pictures get printed on it.) Oddly no one in the present has a similar reaction when the party spends money acquired in the year 2300 AD or 65 million BC. The money is accepted in the future because, well, they don't exactly have anything else, really. The money is also accepted in the past because, as the trader says, he wants your "shiny stone," and is willing to give you stuff for it.
  • Also contains a subversion: The "weapons shop" in prehistoric era refuses to take money, and will only accept trade goods from their hunting grounds (horns and the like). There is another caveman nearby, however, who's more than happy to "trade your shiny stone" for healing potions. And before you ask, the weapons you can acquire there (then, rather) are superior to the far future ones you have currently...
• Donkey Kong: The second and third Donkey Kong Country games involve using two types of coins: "regular" coins for getting important items (banana coins and bear coins respectively), and "special" coins for unlocking hidden levels (Kremkoins and "Bonus coins"). Actually, both games also have a third type: a giant one with "DK" on it, but those are just for getting 100% Completion. Banana Coins are also used in Donkey Kong 64, Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze; the latter game stands out because the coins can be found and invested in all playable islands, not just Donkey Kong's.
• "Credits" in Mass Effect. The codex states credits have a floating exchange rate that is calculated in real-time with the currencies of local planets and countries, meaning that anyone on Earth can convert credits to their value in, say, dollars or yen with a press of a button. It's mentioned that there wasn't a single "credit" system in the galaxy until the Volus entered the galactic scene. Interestingly, credits also work outside of Citadel space.
• The main currency on Anachronox, the money that is accepted all over the universe, by all the established races in the game, is... the Canadian dollar. Specifically, the loonie dollar coin. Paper is not accepted.
• In the MMO EVE Online, the standard unit of currency accepted everywhere (including between factions that are at Cold War with each other), is the Interstellar Standard Kredit, or ISK. Being that a large economic simulation is a key part of the game, literal financial empires are built on this standard. ISK is the universal currency used by capsulers, but there are countless other currencies used by people planetside. The ISK is just used to facilitate trade between people bouncing around the galaxy with budgets the size of planetary GDPs.
  • The name is something of a Bilingual Bonus too — the game's developers, CCP, are based out of Iceland, which uses ISK as the standard code for the Icelandic currency, the króna.
• In the Shadow Hearts series all games take place in different parts of the world, let alone different countries. In the first game alone you visit China, Austria-Hungary,^note More specifically Prague, Bohemia, now Czechia, and Bistritz, Transylvania, now Romania France, and Britain, and your funds still can be used everywhere. In fact, games avoid assigning any specific currency to money, and simply call it "cash".
• Fol in the Star Ocean series is, in fact, intergalactic currency. Whether you're in a primitive planet based on 12th century or in a super-advanced planet, you use Fol to pay for your items. Then again, you're inside an MMORPG run by multi-dimensional beings. And once you visit the creator's world in Star Ocean 3, it's accepted there too. Meaning that 4D beings playing Eternal Sphere [the name of the MMORPG] have to spend real money to buy anything ingame.
• The Space Stage in Spore is a particularly egregious example: every space-faring civilization in the galaxy uses the same unit of currency. Which wouldn't be too bad, except that this includes your civilization before you've made contact with anyone else.
  • In fact, even the Grox use this currency, despite being evil life-hating cyborgs who are in turn despised by every civilized species around.
• The Shadowrun RPG features Nuyen, which, as the name implies, is a new form of the yen. It's accepted everywhere.
• The use of "credits" in the Crusader games is perfectly justified by a global corporate hegemony. However, it's implied to be at least partially electronic-based money, which means it would be an odd choice for taking to the black marketeer you use to buy your toys at, no?
• This is mostly played straight in the MMO World of Warcraft with vendors trading in copper, silver, and gold pieces across all factions, multiple planets, and even multiple realms of existence like the afterlife. They are also one of the only currencies that can be traded between players.
  • The game does have a large list of other collectibles referred to and treated as currencies, from PvP Tokens and boss tokens primarily used for gear, to specific items only accepted by minor factions: Sporeggar only takes a certain mushroom; Ogri'la only takes a certain crystal; the Winterfin murlocs only take a certain species of clam. Most of these currencies, however, are a currency primarily for the sake of gameplay, and in universe represent something more like a proof of a deed or service (one of the reasons they usually can't be traded between players), or are sought after for a specific reason by their respective vendors independent of the vendor's ability to still buy anything from the player in the universal set of copper, silver, and gold coins.
  • Even more confusing is that copper, silver and gold can all be mined in game and smelted into bars, but the value of these trade goods is in no way related to value of the same materials when used as currency. A gold bar is worth far less than one gold coin to most people.
  • While GP and copper, silver, and gold was the gameplay mechanic standard, the fluff made a point that the Horde hadn't started minting its own coins yet (it takes place before the MMO) and if trading in Horde territory, you were more likely to be doing business with gold nuggets and dust than coins.
• Gaia Online has multiple currencies. The most common is Gaia Gold (g), which is used in most stores, and on the marketplace. The other official currency is Gaia Cash (gc, or GCash), which is obtained through microtransactions. GCash can be used in all shops except one, and certain items can only be purchased with cash. In addition, La Victoire (Cash Shop) and Phin Phang (Aquarium Shop) only accept GCash, and the zOMG! Power Up items from Back Alley Bargains can only be purchased for cash as well. The Casino games use two forms of currency: Tokens and Tickets. These function identically to their real life counterparts (Tokens are used to play the games, and tickets are used to purchase prizes from Prize and Joy). Null Fragments are used by Nicolae for Item Crafting, and can be earned from quests or purchased for 25gc a piece. Finally, the Mythrill and Fail Coins are prizes from random boxes that can be sold for up to 5 Million Gold.
• Averted In the Exile and Avernum series, the manual say that the "gold" referred to in the game is not actual gold pieces, but random valuables (such as coins, small gems and animal skins) that can be used for barter underground. Quantifying it, therefore, seems to be a sort of translation for the benefit of us players, who are used to living in a society with quantified currency.
  • The Empire that controls the surface does mint a global currency but despite that in the third game your party still uses the same currency both above ground and underground. This is justified above ground in that adventurers are common enough that shopkeepers (especially those that deal with them regularly) would be used to dealing with them paying with the bartered spoils of their adventures. Similarly Empire coins are still accepted underground since even without the backing of the Empire they are made out of gold and silver.
• Rings in Sonic Chronicles. Even once you're inside the "Twilight Cage" alien universe.
• City of Heroes had a metaphorical global currency.
  • The original developers, Cryptic, recognized that tying the game's economy to an actual currency would conflict with their desire to give players the ability to design superheroes however they wanted, including writing their own unique backgrounds. It wouldn't make sense for an Eccentric Millionaire who prefers Crimefighting with Cash to scrape for pennies as they came up through the levels. Therefore, they hit on the idea of superheroes "paying" for goods and services with their Influence, a representation of their fame, connections, and favors that others owe them. The expansion City of Villains used the same system, but called it "Infamy" instead. Upon Going Rogue's release, characters from Praetorian Earth used the same system as well, though for them it was called "Information" (representing valuable secrets, knowledge, and the like that a Powers Division character could use to gain leverage). "Inf" was the shorthand name for this system, and when Issue 18 (the same issue that introduced Going Rogue as well as allowed characters to switch sides via an alignment system) came out, it was made truly global as a character would retain all their "inf" regardless of how many times they went through the Face–Heel Revolving Door.
  • There are several other types of currency but only one is tradeable like Influence/Infamy/Information, and that is Candy Canes. Candy Canes are only accepted by the Candy Keeper who appears during the Winter Event in exchange for various items. As such, Candy Canes are only found on enemies associated with that event.
  • The completely non-tradeable currencies are Reward Merits that can be used at merit vendors to buy rare items rather than trying to buy them off the player market, Vanguard Merits that are earned for defeating Rikti (after you join the Vanguard) and can be used at their base to purchase special items from them, and Tickets earned from playing Architect Entertainment missions that you can cash in at any AE building for anything from inspirations to the Uncommon or Rare salvage of your choice.
  • Characters who stick to one of the ends of the alignment scale can earn Hero or Villain Merits. These allow for the direct purchase of rare recipes at a much lower cost. However, you lose all your merits if your alignment shifts, meaning that players farming for merits are limited to their home city, Co-Op Zones, and Praetoria.
• Jet Force Gemini: Tokens (grey-colored coins with the Jet Force logo engraved in them) are used in all spacecrafts and planets where a Floyd minigame, merchant shop or even arcade stand is present. The game is set in a solar system with a recognized interplanetary federative union, so it makes sense.
• In Little Big Adventure the same currency (Kashes) is used throughout the planet of Twinsun (partially justified by Funfrock ruling the world with an iron fist). The same is not true for the planet of Zeelich in the second game, which uses a completely different currency, the Zlito (probably named after the Polish zloty). However, you can meet a collector who will take your items in as exotic curiosities, albeit for very little money. Furthermore, the ferry man of Zeelich will only accept gems.
• Most strategy games uses a common global currency for accounting purposes and ignores fluctuations in exchange rates.
  • Europa Universalis uses the ducat (a gold coin)
  • Victoria: An Empire Under The Sun uses the £.
  • And Hearts of Iron simply uses "money" although it is symbolized by the $ sign. Money itself is not very useful alone, but it is used as a trade good to acquire more valuable materials like metal, crude oil, supplies, or fuel from other countries.
  • Justified in Homeworld 1&2 and the Expansion Pack Cataclysm. Your "currency" for purchasing units are Resource Units, and actually are what you use to build items, and are only used once or twice to purchase technology from another spacefaring race, which you are told have been calculated very carefully to match their rates.
  • Medieval: Total War (set in 1087-1518) uses the florin—partial Truth in Television, as it was a standard coin throughout much of medieval Europe, containing 54 grains (3.5 grams) of gold.
  • Shogun: Total War and its sequel use "koku" a Japanese unit of volume (about 278.3 liters), which historically was defined the amount of rice a single person can eat per year.
  • Master of Orion is a 4X game that uses the BC, probably for billion credits. Alien races use it too, judging by the trading screens. The base unit is large because you're running a galactic empire.
• The game Deus Ex uses credits as the UN-controlled currency in the mid 21st century, with a few in-game articles discussing the ramifications of a totally digital economy. However, dollars are still mentioned at least once.
• Pokémon:
  • Pokémon is a special case—nobody seems to agree on what the English name for the P with two crosses is. Suggested names have included: Pokédollars, Pokémon Dollars, Poké, PokéYen, Dollars, Pyen, and even Zenny. The only places where the currency is officially given a name are Poké in the Pokémon Mystery Dungeon series, and "Pokémon Dollars" in the Pokémon Colosseum games.
  • In Pokémon XD: Gale of Darkness, the Poké Coupons you can obtain at Realgam Tower's Pokémon Bingo can be spent at Mt. Battle's prize counter just the same as Coupons earned at Mt. Battle itself, despite there being no in-universe connection between the two facilities.
  • The Japanese games uses Yen as its official currency, which wasn't the problem in the first four generations of the games (since they're all based upon the Pokémon World's equivalent of various fragments of Japan). The problem manifested itself when the fifth and the sixth generations, taking part in the Pokémon World's equivalent of New York and France, respectively, still uses the Yen as their official currency. The Japanese games unusually avert this in the games that take place in Orre. In the Japanese version the currency used is the "Poké Dollar" that the localized games use, most likely because the region is supposed to be based on Arizona. Why this neat little detail wasn't kept when the mainline games started being based on other countries is anyone's guess, though it might have something to do with the games being developed by different teams.
• In Transarctica, a game set in a post-apocalyptic ice world setting, which is really Earth after a failed experiment to stop global warming, uses coal as a currency. The game is set on a steam train—making coal the most vital resource, keeping you from being crushed by the Evil Empire and freezing to death. Also, there are two kinds of coal—brown and black, black is the real currency, while brown is used mostly as fuel. You can use the black coal for a substantial speed boost, literally burning money. Must be a very funny economy, burning money on one side and frequently finding new coal mines on the other.
• Crystals in An Untitled Story are accepted by anyone, outside of SkyTown included.
• Soul Nomad & the World Eaters use Gig Points, the currency endorsed and backed by the one, the only, Indestructible Gig. It is never spent on anything in the mundane gameworld (and there's nothing you can buy anyway)—you spend it on hiring and employing troops, and buying edicts, decor and rooms, all of which can be considered extensions of Gig's powers. It's effectively the inverse of a global currency, one that only really matter to one person.
• Averted in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Geralt must take Temerian and Nilfgaardian currency to the bank and exchange them for Novigrad coins to be able to spend them on anything. Annoyingly, the bulk of early game money is unusable currency, but the bank is in an out-of-the-way, higher-level area that you're unlikely to go to for hours unless you go out of your way to get there.
• In Cyber Nations, players can choose one of several real-world currencies as their national currency, but it's really just for flavor: All currencies have a 1-1 exchange rate. Of course, talking about the in-game economy in which technology is traded for money is what the game wiki is for.
• Spectral Force: Genesis averts this, if simplistically. There are four major commodities (Gold, Jewels, Relics, and Livestock) and each nation uses one of the four as it's primary currency. During tax months, the others can be traded against your primary at a fluctuating exchange rate. Smart investments can make up a surprising amount of your income. Diplomatic deals are made in each country's primary currency, so having all the gold in the world won't help you when your expansionist neighbor wants gems as tribute.
• In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the player will deal with all the 16 funding Nations of the Council in unified "Credits." Justified in that the Council nations streamlined the funding/logistics aspect of supplying X-Com so that the organization can focus on fighting aliens instead of spending internal manpower and precious time on calculating the exchange rates of several forms of currency.
• Endless Space uses "Dust," which plays a larger role in the background story but for gameplay purposes it's just that. Its icon even looks like a gold coin.
• Mostly played straight in Neverwinter Nights 1, with the exception of one point in the original campaign with a particular vendor who only accepts "Smuggler's Coins," which you can find in loot from certain enemy and buy a limited quantity of. They're worthless everywhere else.
• In the Assassin's Creed series, you, the player (and also Desmond) only have to deal with a single currency, whether it's florins, acre, or pounds, but the Animus database specifically mentions that this is a convenience imposed on the Framing Device: technically, the player is using all kinds of currency, but the Animus itself simplifies it so that the user can concentrate on more important things.
• The unnamed coins in the Super Mario Bros. series. Oh sure, you might be in space, on a tropical island or in any one of the later Mario & Luigi or Paper Mario settings, but absolutely everything of note just happens to cost those gold coins you can find all over the place. It is however averted in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, where for whatever reason, the Beanbean Kingdom doesn't use the same type of money and the exchange rate ends up being so bad you end up getting 99 Beanbean Kingdom coins in exchange for about 9 million Mushroom Kingdom ones. In Super Mario Odyssey, each Kingdom has and accepts the typical gold coins, but also has its own type of purple coins that must be used at their shops' purple counters for exclusive regional items.
• No Man's Sky has Units, which are a valid currency at all Space Stations and Trading Posts within its massive universe.
• The Tales Series has Gald. It's accepted everywhere, whether the main party travels from one world to another (Tales of Symphonia) or even time traveling (Tales of Phantasia).
• Ring Runner: Flight of the Sages has plex, which became the standard galactic monetary unit because it's a Practical Currency that can be used to make almost anything.
• Ryzom's vendors (save for Civilization and Faction Vendors) all take Dappers, which seem to be small drops of amber, as payment.
• FTL: Faster Than Light has Scrap as the game's universal resource (no pun intended), being little more than chunks of metal with value placed on it. It can be gained as a reward for helping locals with a problem, or just by blowing up pirates, Rebels, and raiders and using the remaining bits as currency. Since direct consumption of Scrap can upgrade the systems of any vessel, it's possible for some amount of Scrap to permanently exit the economy, thus preserving its value. It's accepted anywhere: Federation sectors, Rebel space, slaver hideouts, the ancient lost Crystalman sectors, you name it.
• In the X-Universe series, all the races of the Commonwealth spend Credits. However, many centuries before the first game, each race minted their own currency. The local Proud Merchant Race pioneered the global currency and pushed its acceptance. When the Earth State is reconnected to the X-Universe Portal Network in the climax to X3: Reunion after 700 years of separation, they apparently switch to the Credit in the couple year long Time Skip between it and X3: Terran Conflict, where they are a full-featured faction. In the climax to Terran Conflict, another equally long Terran Lost Colony is reconnected, which will accept credits even before you talk to their ambassador.
• In Planet Explorers, meat serves this purpose in Story Mode. In Adventure Mode, there is an actual currency.
• Startopia employs an energy-based economy.
• In Holy Umbrella, the universally-accepted coinage is known as "seville."
• In XCOM 2, the main currencies within the resistance's Black Market are Supplies and Intel, though they are used for very different things. Supplies are consumed by XCOM to build facilities and items, and are gained by selling loot on the Black Market. Anything you do on the Avenger itself uses these generic Supplies. Intel, on the other hand, is paid to gain resistance contacts, reveal information about enemies, and to buy items off the Black Market. As with Supplies, Intel is a generic resource used to buy any of these services.
• Used in Wasteland 2 where the universal currency is scrap metal (or just "scrap") both in the Arizona wasteland and in the remains of Los Angeles despite the two regions being completely isolated from one another.
• Halo:
  • Credits (abbreviated as cR) are standard currency on human worlds, and it's implied that they're becoming increasingly accepted on ex-Covenant worlds in the post-war era.
  • The multi-species Covenant has its own universal currency, the gekz. Its worth has dropped since the fall of the Covenant (to the point where some people no longer accept them), but it's still implied to be the most widely used currency in ex-Covenant space.
• All Story of Seasons games use gold as their currency. It's never stated where they take place, however from appearances it doesn't seem as if all games take place in a single country.
• Completely averted in the Quest for Glory series. Each game takes you to a new location in a completely different part of the world, and often one of the first things you have to do is visit the money changer to get the money you collected from the previous game exchanged for the local currency.
• For the first time in a platforming-based Mario game, coins in Super Mario Odyssey are used to pay for things rather than just be collectibles. Both this trope and Global Currency Exception are in play as gold coins are accepted in any kingdom you visit but any purple coins you collect only have worth in the kingdom they are collected in (which take on different shapes in each kingdom to denote their uniqueness to that locale).
• Averted in Pillars of Eternity, as you can find a wide ranging variety of coins. However, for simplicity's sake, the different types are automatically converted into their value of the game's default currency when you pick them up.
• Most games in the Dragon Quest series play it straight (except where the casinos are concerned) with gold. However, Dragon Quest XI makes a logical exception in that, near the ruins of a kingdom that collapsed before the game begins, you can find old currency from that kingdom. Though nobody will honor them, they can be sold, presumably as antiques.
• In the Avadon series, the only currency used is gold. Justified, since the games take place in an alliance of nations run from the titular fortress, so a standardized currency makes economic and political sense.
• Starbound has the pixel, which is accepted by everyone, from the futuristic space station selling you vehicle upgrades to primitive cannibal tribes. It's also used as a crafting ingredient, as you can 3D-print a variety of useful and decorative items from pixels. This also consumes the pixels in question, ensuring that they don't accumulate at such a rate as to become worthless.
• BattleTech, MechCommander, and the MechWarrior games where you play as a mercenary unit all feature C-bills as the core currency, just like their source material. The various House bills that canonically exist aren't even acknowledged, and all of your purchasing, hiring, and upgrade expenses are calculated in C-bills. Even people who hate your guts will accept your C-bills.
• Island Saver:
  • Downplayed. Though the standard Doubloon currency is needed to buy items, get trash back from recycling machines and for some building projects, there are some bankimals that instead produce real-world currencies (they're more common on the latter two islands). These currencies are taken to a foreign exchange machine to be converted into Doubloons.
  • Played straight on Fantasy Island and Dinosaur Island as foreign currency has been abolished in the DLC.
• Endless Ocean: Blue World uses a fictional currency called "pelagos", as the game is primarily set in the equally ficitonal Pelago Commonwealth of the South Pacific Ocean.

Webcomics

• In Escape from Terra the United World of Terra uses "Continentals." Mars and the Belters prefer gold.
• Shmuckers in Erfworld, as expected from its premise of a turn-based strategy mechanics verse. Curiously, there are two exceptions to this rule: casters in the Magic Kingdom have their own currency, the Rand, to prevent Moneymancers from having an unfair advantage, and coins (which are physical, unlike the other two currencies, which are just stats tracked by the "game engine") are used to pay for minor goods and services between units.
• Stand Still, Stay Silent: In a short comic exclusive to the first book, Tuuri is shown purchasing a cupcake in Sweden using money she earned in Finland. The money she uses seems to be krónur from Iceland, which, in the comic's world, houses three quarters of the known survivors to the Zombie Apocalypse and has its language as the Common Tongue.

Websites

• In Mortasheen, the universal currency is actually blood, due to how useful it is for the typical mad-science-related goings-on. They even have a monster created to hold and dispense it.

Web Videos

• Despite SMPLive having several player-made Fictional Currencies of its own, the currency most used and accepted by all players is diamonds.

Western Animation

• Spoofed in the South Park episode "Pinewood Derby," with "Space Cash," used by some kind of planet confederation. Turns out they were actually worthless and only used as a Secret Test of Character that Earth failed.
• Ben 10: Alien Force seems to use a sort of Galactic Credit system, though it's rarely seen. One episode had the team given a gold-class "credit cube" (which appears to be nothing more than a 3-cubic-inch block), which apparently has no spending limit.
• Snelfus on Cyberchase. The value of these doesn't seem to conform to any standard exchange rate—probably writer laziness rather than inflation. They look like euros in bill form.
• Zigzagged in Avatar: The Last Airbender where each nation / country has it's own currency, but most merchants don't bother to differentiate between them and seemingly take them on par because, as one merchant puts it, "money is money".
• Seen in Rick and Morty on a near universal equivalence for planets under the rule of the galactic government. Spectacularly exploited by Rick in Season 3.

Real Life

• In Antiquity, the Roman Empire came about as close as you could get. Archaeologists are still finding caches of Roman coinage in places as far afield as Okinawa, and in fact the Roman "Denarius" was so common that it forms the root of many languages' word for "Money," and several modern currencies are named after the Denarius (the various Dinars, for example). Even the British pound has a basis in denarius, as its symbol £ stands for Librum, as in librae, solidi, denarii.
• Visa is a pseudo-Real Life Example: they're accepted all over the world and in places you wouldn't expect, but they still use the issuing country's currency (usually dollars) as a basis for value.
• Until the beginning of the 20th century the global currency was gold (and, to a lesser extent, silver). All the different currencies (dollar, pound, mark, frank, etc) were weights of gold. So using and converting different currencies was generally trivial if the currency was known and trusted.
• A number of survivalists (at least in the US) hold to the philosophy that in a scenario where civilization gets disrupted for a long period, people will refuse to accept modern paper and coin currency, and revert to gold as the standard trade currency. Other theories hold that gold, being useless for practical purposes outside of electronics (which would probably be nigh-impossible to make after the apocalypse), will fall by the wayside, and small, useful consumables (ammunition, aspirin, fuel, etc.) will become the common currency. The wise are betting hard on two-ply toilet paper.
• The US dollar is the most common reserve currency in the world at present—more than half of the world's official foreign exchange reserves is in USD, and it is believed that there are more US dollars outside of the United States than within. Many nations peg their currency to the dollar because of its relative stability; a few even use the dollar as their own official currency instead of making their own. The basis of this state of affairs goes back to the Bretton Woods system established at the close of World War II, where other countries (the oncoming Cold War translated this to those with capitalist economies, especially Western Europe and Japan) would set exchange rates with the US dollar, which in turn could be exchanged for gold at a set price—this resulted in large US dollar reserves held by these rapidly (re)building countries and placing the US at the center of the (First) World economy. Then the Nixon Shock of 1971 terminated the written ability to trade US dollars for gold,^note Between the Triffin dilemma and mounting costs related to The Vietnam War, the US dollar was rapidly tumbling in value ending the Bretton Woods system which was replaced by a free-floating fiat currency exchange system with the US dollar remaining at the center.
• The Euro was started as an attempt to go in this direction. Initially, the member states of the European Union each had their own national currency (the French franc, the Italian lira, the German mark, etc.) as members of the European Monetary Union, both current and prospective European Union members are obliged to eventually adopt the euro (though one current member and one former member have permanent opt-out exemptions: Denmark^note the Danish krone is pegged to the euro, though and the United Kingdom). As of 2023, 20 of the 27 member states use the euro as their national currency (beside the two exempt, the other seven are formally obliged to at some point but currently do not because their economies joining right now is deemed too disruptive). Four non-EU countries (Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City) have bilateral agreements with the EU to use the euro for themselves, while Montenegro and Kosovo have done so unilaterally (they previously used the German mark). Several other currencies are also pegged to the euro—many of these were formerly pegged to a national currency that the euro succeeded (for example, the West African franc—itself a common currency of eight West African countries—used to be pegged to the French franc).
• The Bitcoin is established under this concept. Unlike currencies established by nations, the bitcoin is not under control of any government or centralized financial institution and thus universal for worldwide. While the details are very complex, the currency is basically "created" by datamining, using an idle (or specially-built) computer's processes to crunch through and verify the transactions of the bitcoin currency. Doing this successfully awards the user that did it with some Bitcoin. However, the bitcoin is often criticized for being unstable and highly volatile: because it has no government backing, it is vulnerable to speculation and artificial scarcity, as well as coordinated manipulation that an actual government could prevent or mitigate, with the extreme value changes from 2016 on showing why currency is generally pegged to some kind of stable indicator. Without actual stability in the currency value, Bitcoin could be worth hundreds of dollars one minute and next to nothing literally the next minute, with the volatility increasing as more Bitcoins reach the market.

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