"Euros Accepted" signs pop up in New York City Wed Feb 6, 12:11
PM ET
NEW YORK (Reuters) - In the latest example
that the U.S. dollar just ain't what it used to be,
some shops in New York City have begun accepting euros
and other foreign currency as payment for merchandise.
"We had decided that money is money and we'll take
it and just do the exchange whenever we can with our
bank," Robert Chu, owner of East Village Wines,
told Reuters television.
The increasingly weak U.S. dollar, once considered the
king among currencies, has brought waves of European
tourists to New York with money to burn and looking
to take advantage of hugely favorable exchange rates.
"We didn't realize we would take so much in and
there were that many people traveling or having euros
to bring in. But some days, you'd be surprised at how
many euros you get," Chu said.
"Now we have to get familiar with other currencies
and the (British) pound and the Canadian dollars we
take," he said.
While shops in many U.S. towns on the Canadian border
have long accepted Canadian currency and some stores
on the Texas-Mexico border take pesos, the acceptance
of foreign money in Manhattan was unheard of until recently.
An employee of the Belgian Central
Bank shows off a fistful of euro notes in Brussels,
December 21, 2001. In the latest example that the U.S.
dollar just ain't what it used to be, some shops in
New York City have begun accepting euros and other foreign
currency as payment for merchandise.
Not far from Chu's downtown wine emporium,
Billy Leroy of Billy's Antiques & Props said the vast
numbers of Europeans shopping in the neighborhood got him
thinking, "My God, I should take euros in at the store."
Leroy doesn't even bother to exchange them.
"I'm happy if I take in 200 euros, because
what I do is keep them," he said. "So when I go
back to Paris, I don't have to go through the nightmare of
going to an exchange place."
(Reporting by Angela Moore, writing by Bill
Berkrot; Editing by Doina Chiacu)