How prevalent is the concept and usage of “money” in the universe, as it is utilized here on Earth?

The use of some medium of exchange is commonplace throughout the universe. It is done more through trade and barter than using money per se because money is a substitute for something tangible but is literally that, it is a promise that it is representing something of value. This requires trust, and sometimes verification, and may not even hold up if there is no tangible link to some type of physical reality. That is what has happened on the Earth with respect to the fiat money system that is based on faith in government bodies but there is no guarantee that the value will be sustained, so the type of money you have in your world is the least desirable and would not be acceptable to many extraterrestrial beings for that reason. You are at a primitive stage of development culturally and have not been through a great enough length of time to work out strategies for having a representation of a stored wealth that is a more streamlined means of exchanging value. This requires a certain level of cultural sophistication, experience, and intelligence to develop strategies to satisfy the criteria for real money as opposed to a fiat system based on promises with nothing truly underpinning the tokens used as a medium of exchange. That is a dangerous situation because it is very easy to manipulate and that is the reason it is used universally by governments, because they can rig their own economic worth and manipulate the markets to their advantage oftentimes, and this will cause distortion in their favor which is the whole point. So an ideal system would be based on something tangible that is in wide desirability and that would be far better and would give people something real that will not likely drop greatly in value over time.