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Ancient Egyptians were making metal rings which some historians thinks they used as money.
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In China, rather than exchanging objects like tools and weapons, a system of using miniature replicas of the objects to be trades were used instead of the objects themselves.
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In China the first paper money was being used.
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First coins, as we would recognise them, were made in Lydia (now Western Turkey).
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Europeans began to use more and more metal coins, made with metal taken from their colonies overseas.
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Canadian and many other colonies began to use paper money too and this innovation led to a huge increase in international trade.
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A Spanish eight real coin was often Split up into bits to pay for things, leaving the bits as change. 'Bit' was an English term for a small coin and was still used until very recently. In the English colonies of the West Indies half a real was four bits and a quarter was two bits, a phrase used by people in the USA today.
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Because physical money is no longer directly linked to valuable ítems and because notes can no longer be exchanged for these precios metals, economies rely on people having confidence in the value of money.Nowadays, many people use plastic cards called debit cards to pay for things. The cards transfer money from their bank account to the shop's bank account. People also use money they don't even have yet by paying with credit cards. Theu then pay back the money later.
