Kazakhstan was multiple kinds of interesting. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan was one of the last countries to switch to their own currency. It was beautiful stuff -- gold and silver filigree running through the paper, with pictures of poets and philosophers in bright colors. Unfortunately it cost more to print than it was worth. And they didn't have the technology to print it, so they were relying on another country in Europe somewhere to handle that for them.
Like Russia back then, KZ was a totally cash based economy. So to switch the currency, officials went door to door, said "I'm from the government, give me your money," (effectively), and people were granted official IOUs that could be redeemed for cash once the new stuff was finished.
Of course, being a new country and all, they couldn't actually pay for the printing. So the group handling that for them stopped printing the cash until KZ paid their bills.
As it was a cash based economy and they had no cash, everything ground to a halt. Factories couldn't pay workers. They reverted to barter.
A company down in Santa Maria where I was living at the time was selling mining equipment to KZ. They stopped getting paid as well, so once the whole story came out, they said "You know what you need? A debit card system."
I and a handful of others went there to build a system for them. We set it up in a few key factory towns, and trained them on the system for deploying it more widely. Which means I ended up seeing the inside of a lot of banks.
I have a bunch of stories which I should probably write up some time. But for now, a picture of my debit card I had with our system over there.
