Telephone token

Telephone tokens were once widely used in Europe, Israel, Japan, and South America, but have since been largely superseded by telephone cards and credit cards.

They were introduced during inflationary periods to avoid having to frequently change the coin slots on pay phones.

This came in especially handy in European countries where currencies changed as one crossed national borders, but a token could still be used.

It was also the practice for some restaurants to have their own tokens so that those bought at a different place could not be used at that business.

In some countries, such as with Italian gettone, they were used informally as cash equivalents.