It’s worse in a lot of other places around the world. A lot of vendors in Asia won’t accept credit card payments from foreign BIN numbers. Want to buy a train or plane ticket from the local service provider? Too bad. Want to top up a SIM card? Definitely not. A lot of those places also have local payment wallets (like TNG, GoPay, GrabPay…) that are incredibly ubiquitous, and entirely inaccessible without a local bank account. In most of those places it’s the local governments fault rather than the vendors fault specifically, but still incredibly frustrating.