Cash in turkey?

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Cruiser007

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Does anyone have experience of living over winter in turkey regarding credit cards and cash?

We have a euro debit card and sterling debit cards. The bank want to charge us 2.99% for each transaction not in the cards currency, ie turkish lira. And another 1.5% to withdraw cash at atms .We are looking for a cheaper option

Would it be best to take cash into turkey and exchange this at a bank for lira?

Any recommendations please?

Thank you in advance .
 
Cash in Turkey

Cruiser007 said:
Does anyone have experience of living over winter in turkey regarding credit cards and cash?

We have a euro debit card and sterling debit cards. The bank want to charge us 2.99% for each transaction not in the cards currency, ie turkish lira. And another 1.5% to withdraw cash at atms .We are looking for a cheaper option

Would it be best to take cash into turkey and exchange this at a bank for lira?

Any recommendations please?

Thank you in advance .
Click to expand...

It depends where you will be in Turkey. If you are around any of the popular tourist areas Marmaris, Gocek, Fethiye, Finike, Bodrum Didim etc you should be able to find shops that will give you an excellent rate for cash into lira. We stopped taking PO changed cash a few years ago when we realised the rate was better over there. We use a Norwich & Peterborough current account debit card to get cash from ATMs and pay everything in cash we can. N&P have no charges for using the debit card abroad. We used to us Nationwide BS card until they started charging for it abroad.

Anything to do with marine is usually charged in euros, sterling or even dollars at the West marine stores, but local shops take lira. Watch out for any quotes to make sure what currency you are being charged in as they love to swop around so if you think you are in lira, sometimes it could be euros which is much more expensive.
 
In the major towns there are ATMs which give sterling and consequently some cards will not charge. It also means that you get a better rate of exchange locally rather than the interbank rate . The Norwich & Peterborough current account debit card option has been mentioned. Why not just open a bank account locally and transfer money into it. Turkish banks allow you to hold sterling and TL accounts so you can transfer from UK direct into your sterling account which you can then transfer into your TL account for which you can get a debit card, You do not have to have Residency to do all this just a tax number which is free and takes about 10 minutes to get at your local tax office.
 
Many thanks for the replies.

That n&p card looks interesting, will look into that one....

Akyaka, we are headed for finike, do you think this has a sterling atm dispenser, our life would be so much easier if it did!

Regards.
 
Cruiser007,

Finike has plenty of ATM's and quite a few that dispense foreign currency such as Euro, GBP, Dollar. Never investigated what the charges are for withdrawing foreign currency. As far as I know the only place to exchange foreign cash into TL in Finike will be the banks themselves, no such thing as money exchange shops like you see in Marmaris, Bodrum etc.

Although the marina and yard quote in Euros they always convert this to TL when you make payment in another currency and the invoice will be in TL. The computer system is linked to the banks so they always use the inter bank mid rate to make conversions.

For what it is worth we just use our UK HSBC debit card for drawing out TL, even after paying charges we get more TL for our money than you can buying TL in the UK through any FX shop or website. We just accept it as a cost of being in Turkey and it probably amounts to £10-20 per month for normal living costs. Finike is also very cheap for groceries and eating out so you will save much more than that anyway. We usually draw out about £250 at a time since this is the daily card limit and this costs about £11 or just under 5%. There probably are cheaper ways but probably not worth the hassle to save maybe an extra 1% - just enjoy spending very little for your day to day living costs.

We will be back in Finike for the winter so we can have a few beers together.
 
Cruiser007,

Finike has plenty of ATM's and quite a few that dispense foreign currency such as Euro, GBP, Dollar. Never investigated what the charges are for withdrawing foreign currency. As far as I know the only place to exchange foreign cash into TL in Finike will be the banks themselves, no such thing as money exchange shops like you see in Marmaris, Bodrum etc.

Although the marina and yard quote in Euros they always convert this to TL when you make payment in another currency and the invoice will be in TL. The computer system is linked to the banks so they always use the inter bank mid rate to make conversions.

For what it is worth we just use our UK HSBC debit card for drawing out TL, even after paying charges we get more TL for our money than you can buying TL in the UK through any FX shop or website. We just accept it as a cost of being in Turkey and it probably amounts to £10-20 per month for normal living costs. Finike is also very cheap for groceries and eating out so you will save much more than that anyway. We usually draw out about £250 at a time since this is the daily card limit and this costs about £11 or just under 5%. There probably are cheaper ways but probably not worth the hassle to save maybe an extra 1% - just enjoy spending very little for your day to day living costs.

We will be back in Finike for the winter so we can have a few beers together.
 
Thanks crisjones for your info, looking forward to a cold beer!

Out of interest how is the marina wifi in finike? Reasonable speeds or dead slow with drop outs and most importantly is it free?

Thanks again to everyone who helped us out in this matter

C007.
 
WiFi last winter was not brilliant, if you were near the transmitter it was OK but boats further away were not happy with the quality.

However they were supposed to fitting a completely new wifi system in June this year to try and drastically improve the performance and bandwidth. I have had no reports as to completion or performance of the new system so we can only hope for a decent improvement.

The WiFi is free, as is water and electricity - or at least they are all included in the berthing fee!!!
 
Hi C007, we never saw an ATM that dispensed GBP, only Euros and Dollars, last winter in Finike.
We also have an N and P account and have enjoyed free cash withdrawals everywhere on our travels. The rate we get is the bank rate, so if you google rate of exchange GBP to TL that is what we get, which i don't think can be bettered.
Agree with crisjones about not buying TL in the UK.
However the savings over a year of withdrawing cash using the N and P card are well worth the set up of an N and P account, as we can put the extra nearly 5% to good use! Usually on beer!

You didn't ask about credit cards so assume you may have the free to use abroad ones already.

The marina wifi in Finike is variable, upgrades are always being discussed, my ipad2 can't pick it up from our berth but Lofticus's iPad 4 works. Some days it can be slow and it can drop out.
We use Turkcell and a hotspot, which after the initial purchase of the mifi and sim, costs us 79TL for 10GB .( Another good use of the 5%! ) This has always been excellent and has been working even in some quite remote anchorages through the summer, and also when we travel inland. We find the 10GB lasts us about 2 months with average use of two devices and hungry uploads done in the odd bar or marina. Others we know have high gain wifi antennas and can sometimes get coverage free.
Hope this is useful info and that you enjoy the winter in Finike, it is a great marina and town.
 
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