Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.France: Cashless, but Not Classless
On both sides of the Atlantic, the fast expansion of credit-card systems is paving the way for what may some day be a cashless society. But it won't be a classless society—at least in Europe. Beginning next month, a favored few will be able to flash what promises to be the most patrician card of them all: a plastic ducat bearing the famed five-arrow emblem of the House of Rothschild and the blue-and-yellow racing colors of Guy Edouard Alphonse Paul de Rothschild, 57, head of the Paris branch of the family and of the grande dame of French banks,...
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