...sooo when you are out on your weekly shopping-Spree in Scintilla, whats the payment plan?

What do you use in Warhammer?

Throne Gelt ok, but is it coins, bills, cards?

copper, silver, gold, adamantium?

feral Worlds i guess use trading more, but the more civilised planets?

I don't think I've ever heard a decent explanation of what a "Gelt" actually is. At least, not from an official source.

Some extremely fast n' loose research makes me think that there might not be a standard form of Gelt. A lot of times it seems to be a coin of some kind, probably to fit with 40k's weird feudal tones, but not every planet will have the resources to mint coins, so maybe it could be paper in some places. Emprah only knows how they deal with counterfeiters.

I remember someone around here posted a table of random loot that included a Credit Wand, which was a kind of a key to an account - basically an old timey credit card. Not sure how canonical that is, but it's a cool idea either way.

Very much depends on where you are and what your RT's style is.

On a major civilized world like Scintilla I'd probably say one of his factors immdiately popped down to a bank/money lender/counting house with a dozen porters laden with chests full of coins and a folder of notes of credit and set up an account. Assuming he didn't have one already (it is after all the sector capital after all). After that the RT just says "I want that, charge it to my account / draw me up a letter of credit to sign."

On a less civilized world the porters with chests of coins follow the RT around and trade the coin for the boxes of hats or whatever. Presumably a squad of carapace armored, bolter wielding, badass armsmen will dissuade any local scum from making a try for one of the chests. If not, then it's a little entertainment along the way.

Side note: Gilt is a term more or less meaning "covered in gold," so perhaps gelt is something similar given the setting's tendency to misspell things to make them sound different and old timey. I imagine it as Gelt being the generic term for money and the Throne part indicating the specific form like Canadian and Dollar. Cog gelt might be the type of money used by the Lathe worlds, it's paper/plastic money rather than coins, but it's still gelt.

Pg 113 in the RT core give a good idea. From What I read The Throne Gelt is less of a coinage (even though there are throne gelt coins) and more of a value indicator.

Very much depends on where you are and what your RT's style is.

On a major civilized world like Scintilla I'd probably say one of his factors immdiately popped down to a bank/money lender/counting house with a dozen porters laden with chests full of coins and a folder of notes of credit and set up an account. Assuming he didn't have one already (it is after all the sector capital after all). After that the RT just says "I want that, charge it to my account / draw me up a letter of credit to sign."

On a less civilized world the porters with chests of coins follow the RT around and trade the coin for the boxes of hats or whatever. Presumably a squad of carapace armored, bolter wielding, badass armsmen will dissuade any local scum from making a try for one of the chests. If not, then it's a little entertainment along the way.

Side note: Gilt is a term more or less meaning "covered in gold," so perhaps gelt is something similar given the setting's tendency to misspell things to make them sound different and old timey. I imagine it as Gelt being the generic term for money and the Throne part indicating the specific form like Canadian and Dollar. Cog gelt might be the type of money used by the Lathe worlds, it's paper/plastic money rather than coins, but it's still gelt.

Actually, gelt is an archaic form of geld, which is a term in several germanic languages for money (oft-claimed to be related to gold in etymology).

It's also the past participle of the verb "to geld", a fact celebrated in the 40k short story Warped Stars , with the grox-farming community of Groxgelt: the local mayor/priest is asked by a visiting dignitary (a Captain of the Grief Bringers astartes chapter, working with/for an Inquisitor) whether the name referred to cash or castration (for the record, in that case, castration. Don't blame them, multi-ton omnivorous, aggressively territorial dinosaurs can not be fun to herd)...

As for Throne Gelt, I always treat it almost purely as a currency of account- the Imperium has many different economies and currencies. On the occasions that one has to trade between them it helps to have an agreed-upon exchange rate. Such a thing would almost have to be calculated by organisations such as the Administratum, and potentially large interstellar banking houses (in my games, that includes the Navigator Houses), as they are the ones with a sufficiency of data regarding the economies of various planets. Call it Credits, call it Crowns, call it Thrones, call it Gelt, it doesn't particularly matter, it's an "unified" system of value that can be used to quote value and prices.

If, as in the bit of Dark Heresy that introduced the term Throne Gelt, the Administratum calculates the value of the planetary tithe, they can list an exchange rate between the local currency and the Gelt, pegging the GSP [Gross System Product] as the equivalent of the value of their assessed tithe (although the GDP may be a more accurate representation of the tithe value). If the value of a particular Tithe Grade (say... Exactis Extremis) is pegged at 40 billion Thrones (to pull a number out of my thin air), and the local GSP is, I don't know, 4 trillion shekels, then the posted exchange rate might be 100 shekels to the throne, and that exchange rate would be posted (and per Blind , relayed astropathically). Interstellar traders would be able to sell their goods at that planet. If they then went to buy at a different planet, with an exchange rate of, say 20 crowns to the Throne, they could buy using the shekels (exchanging at 5 shekels to the crown, assuming commission free currency exchange).

In a lot of ways, the Throne Gelt is akin to the $USD, or £GBP as a currency in which deals are agreed, but need not actually be paid in (one may be natively using the zloty and receive payment in yen equal to the dollar amount agreed). Provided there exists an agreed upon currency/exchange rate and either coinage of intrinsic value (such as gold, platinum, palladium, rare gems) or a means for trading back into a local currency (Hello, local branches of interstellar banking Houses, or even Administratum offices), a notional currency works just fine.