What about republic dataries. It was what Qui Gon was trying to use
Huh. I replied without even realizing we'd gone to page two. I've no idea what these are. Interesting. And it sounds like Imperial credits are the US dollar or Euro of the Galaxy.
It's just the old Republic Credits. And yeah when the Empire is in power, you can go most places in the galaxy and use Imperial credits without too much worry of it changing in value. Even if you need to exchange it for something local you'll still end up with roughly the same total buying power.
The more local you get though the more weird. A real world comparison (and something I could see the Hutts totally doing) was Cold War Germany. In West Germany, East and West German Marks were exchanged at the market value, but in the East they were exchanged 1:1. Also it was illegal to import East German Marks into East Germany. So you'd have to take your West Marks over, exchange them there at 1:1, spend whatever you needed to spend, then come back West, and any left over East Marks would have to be changed back at a loss (since the East Marks had a lower international value).
A friend of the family once exchanged a bunch of her Marks in the West, planning to smuggle them in when she went East, but missed her appointment at the bank, so had to just do it the legal way in the East at 1:1. But when she crossed the border, the secret police tore her car apart and questioned her for hours... turns out the Reds had a spy in the bank, but didn't know she missed the appoinment.
And yes, the US loses billions to Credit and Debt fraud annually, usually to Eastern European and (more often) Russian organized crime operations, since the US ability to locate and prosecute them is essentially nil.
