Paper bills were first used by Chinese people, who started carrying folding money during the Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-907) - mostly just in form of privately issued bills of credit or exchange notes - and used it for over 500 years before the practice began to catch on in Europe in the 17th century. While it took about one or even two centuries for paper money to spread out to the rest of the world, China was already going through a kind of fairly advanced financial crisis: the production of paper notes had grown until their value plummeted that prompted inflation to soar. Due to that, China entirely eliminated paper money in 1455 and would not adopt it again for several hundred years after that.
