you used to be alright

unionpay

as someone who gets paid their salary paid into a chinese bank traveling abroad has always required an extra step of preparation, meaning one had to go find money exchangers (usually the uyghurs who sit outside the bank of china) as chinese banks use an atm system called “unionpay” – as opposed to the more familar to global audiences “cirrus” or “plus” interbank networks. not being able to access one’s bank was something that necessitated carrying around large bundles of cash and trying to find money changers who would accept rmb.

for a long time i had believed that to join the global economy, chinese banks needed to follow suit. silly me, all i needed to do was to wait for chinese bank customers to become important enough to matter.