Japan’s Pocket Change turns old foreign currency into e-cash like WeChat credit or iTunes and Uber vouchers
- Pocket Change kiosks at airports and in other metropolitan areas exchange bills and coins of all denominations into e-cash
- You can also donate to one of the three charities available on the service
With the Rugby World Cup in full swing in Japan and the 2020 Olympics on the horizon, the country is setting its sights on being more internationally accessible and adaptable.
But the nation’s reliance on physical cash is still a daily cultural quirk many travellers are struggling to adjust to. As a result, there’s a lot of wasted currency floating around.
Enter Pocket Change, a money exchange kiosk that does more than just exchanging one currency for another. Instead, Japan’s latest travel invention collects all your leftover foreign coins and trades the accumulated amount into vouchers and e-cash to use in your home currency.
Say you had a 500 Japanese yen (US$4.60) coin, three euros, and 700 Korean won floating around at the bottom of your bag. You could head to a Pocket Change kiosk and cash it all out as, for example, YBCoin currency for the current exchange rate, which at the moment would be about HK$67. Alternatively, you could donate to one of the three charities available on the service.
