Credit or debit cards for starters are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic.
You look at the steamboat the railroad the car the airplane - not all of these were invented in the Anglo-American world but they were popularized and extended by it. They were made possible by the financial architecture the capital intensive operations invented and developed by the Anglo-Americans.