Money in Tanzania: practical tips for traveling to Tanzania

In this article I will answer many of the questions travelers ask us before traveling: Money in Tanzania .

What money should I bring to Tanzania? Is it better to bring cash from Spain or take it out there? Do you accept Euros? Are there ATMs? Do you accept credit or debit card payments?

There are many questions that if we do it right we can save a lot of money on our trip to Tanzania.

Official currency Tanzania: Tanzanian shilling.

The official currency in Tanzania is the Tanzanian shilling, which has an exchange rate with the euro of 1 € = 2,500 Tanzanian shillings. It is for this reason that the Tanzanian shilling banknotes have high figures starting with 500 and going up to 10,000 shillings.

The Tanzanian shilling is the currency used by local people in their daily life and it is advisable to always have local currency in case we have to buy some fruit or food in a market. As it is the local currency, we will not have problems in buying those little things.

However, for large amounts, and especially if we are tourists, we will be asked for US dollars.

Other currencies accepted in Tanzania

1- U.S. dollar

The other currency that is widely accepted everywhere is the US dollar after 2009. It is the currency used to pay for safaris and some tourist hotels. If you carry dollars you will not have any problem, everyone accepts them, although they give you the change in local currency, the Tanzanian shilling.

2. The Euro

The Euro is not a common currency, although some places may accept it. If you travel with Trip to Help, you can bring Euros, as we accept them.The safaris we organize can be paid in Euros once we arrive in Tanzania.

If you have a lot of cash and you want to spend it. For example, you got married and you have the money you were given at the wedding and you do not want to deposit it in the bank. In this case, you could pay us a reservation by bank transfer and then in Tanzania pay the rest of the safari in euros.

If you travel with another travel agency and they do not accept euros, my advice is to go to an exchange office (avoiding airports where they charge more commissions and worse exchange rates).

How to plan the money for your trip to Tanzania

In order to save money on bank commissions or exchange agency fees, it is very important to plan your money well in Tanzania. My first recommendation is to have the following debit cards to travel without or with the minimum of commissions.

Commission-free cards for travel to Tanzania

We always use two cards for travel, and they have many advantages over traditional bank cards, those cards are: Revolut and Wise.

1- Revolut: Why is Revolut the best card for travel?

Since 2019, we have Revolut and it has really stopped being just a travel card, but it is now a daily and common spending card between Rachel and me.

The main advantages are:

• Low commissions
• Operational control of everything you pay. Any charge to your card is reflected in the APP so it does not happen like most credit cards that charges appear during the following days. This makes you doubt whether you paid for it or not. With Revolut as you see the charge instantly, you can instantly check if the charge is correct or not.
• The Revolut App is super intuitive.
• You can recharge the debit card from another card you have (I use my personal Bankinter or Santander card to recharge it), or by making a bank transfer to the bank account (IBAN) assigned to you once you sign up.
• NO maintenance fees
• If you exceed in purchases outside the EU, they charge you a small commission that they show you in the movement of the card. Other cards you only see a transaction because they don’t show you the details of the commissions. Revolut specifies what part of the fee you have been charged.
• Much more transparent than traditional cards.
• You can create a virtual debit card in 1 minute in case you don’t want to “use” your other physical Revolut card, in case, for example, you have certain doubts where you are shopping (e.g. an online purchase).
• It is a debit card, so in case it is stolen, they can only steal the money you have on it. Unlike credit cards, which can take all the credit you have on the card.
• Make payments to other Revolut users. It’s super easy and fast (even faster than Bizum).
• You can make international transfers with much lower fees than your traditional bank.
• If you think it has been duplicated or lost, with a single click you can freeze or block it. You can even create another virtual card on the spot.

And a lot of other things. But let’s get to the point, what do we save with a Revolut card?

Here is an example: two transactions of the same amount and on the same day in the same establishment, the only difference is that one was paid with a CaixaBank card and the other with Revolut;

If you look at the first photo you can see a single charge of 5.08€ for a transaction that was made in US dollars. The coffee cost 5,06$ and the bank charged our credit card 5,08€. At first glance there is no fee for paying with your credit card.

If we look at the Revolut card payment, we see much more detail. First we see the merchant charge, $5.06 which is the coffee. Then we see the exchange rate applied by Revolut, the amount exchanged, the commissions and the total which is 4,89€. As you can see in this transaction, Revolut has not charged any commissions and what is important, it has applied the real exchange rate that was at that moment between $ and €. The difference between a coffee paid with different cards with 0.19 € cents, almost 4% difference.

In a coffee it may not seem like much money, but imagine that you pay $2,000 with your card, the difference would be about 80 euros more expense that you would have without realizing it. Money that has disappeared from your card without you knowing it, your bank has kept it in the form of hidden commissions.

Traditional banks can hide two fees from you:

• Commission for use of foreign currency.
• Commission with the exchange rate: an exchange rate more expensive than the real one. The difference between the market exchange rate and the one they apply to you is their profit.

To show you the different Revolut plans I leave you the details. I use the Free Plan, but if you are going to travel and you know that you will spend local money in the destination country, you might want to pay a little more.

2- Wise: Another very good card for traveling abroad.

Wise is the other card we use for traveling abroad. It works very well and can be cheaper than Revolut if you want to make international transfers.

Wise and Revolut are very similar and my recommendation is to have both if you are going on a big trip. If you are worried about money in Tanzania, my recommendation is to always carry both cards, because they are free and you can always combine the two, when you see that one already charges you commission, you can use the other one.

To finish the subject of cards and money in Tanzania, my last recommendation is that you always carry a traditional credit card as a backup in case you run out of money in any of them, you do not pass through any dataphone or simply because you have lost it.

Exchange rate Which one to choose?

Another thing we have to be careful about is when we pay with our Revolut card and the dataphone proposes an exchange rate. The same thing happens when we take out local money at the ATM and the same ATM asks us if we want to accept the proposed exchange rate. In both situations you always have to say NO. The argument is the same as in the previous point, the dataphones and ATMs will charge us an implicit margin in the exchange rate without warning us. Always, and even more when we have the Revolut credit card, we have to refuse the proposals since REVOLUT will apply the real exchange rate at the moment of the transaction.

Which ATM to choose?

You may think that all ATMs are the same… but they are not. There are ATMs and ATMs. My experience traveling tells me that the worst ATMs to withdraw money are the small ATMs in the middle of an establishment or on the street. These “street” ATMs are usually the ones that charge you the most commissions to withdraw money (how else would they make money?).

The best ATM to withdraw money is one that is in a bank, for two reasons. Generally, the commission is lower and, on the other hand, if you have a problem with the ATM (for example, they keep your card) you have someone to turn to.

How to pay Tanzania?

In Tanzania you can pay in local currency, the Tanzanian shilling, in dollars or by debit or credit card. To a lesser extent, Euros are accepted. If you choose to pay by card the establishment will charge you an extra 3 or 5%. Regardless of the card you use. If you use a traditional card, you will have a double charge, 3 or 5% charged by the establishment and almost 4% charged by your bank. That means that for every $100 you will be paying between $7 and $9 more in fees alone, if you don’t do things right.

Whenever you can, it is best to withdraw money with your Revolut card at an official bank ATM. There will be fees, yes, but the ATM will never charge you 3-5% of the total amount withdrawn. Maybe they will charge you 4-8$ in total. If you withdraw more than 100$, it is worth taking out cash. If you have a lot of euros in cash, because you are going on a wedding trip, then go to an exchange house to change the euros to dollars after 2009.

In Tanzania, there are few ATMs, so it is important that you carry local currency or dollars.

How to pay in Zanzibar?

In Zanzibar we may have problems to get cash. There are few ATMs scattered throughout the island, but if one fails, we may have to travel several kilometers to find another ATM in another town. If we have a motorcycle or rental car, it will be easy to get cash, if not, it is best to get cash in Stone Town, Paje, Nungwi.

My recommendation is that if you come from a safari, withdraw money in Stone Town, the capital of Zanzibar. Then, depending on where your hotel is, you will have to withdraw more or less depending on the availability of ATMs in the area.

Conclusions about money on your trip to Tanzania

• Plan well what cash you will carry from Spain and how you will use your credit cards.
• Open an account with cards without commissions and maintenance: Revolut and Wise. Order Revolut here in less than 5 minutes.
• Look for ATMs in bank branches and not small ATMs to withdraw local money, the Tanzanian shilling.
• Never accept the exchange rate offered by a cashier or a dataphone.
• Try to pay in cash as much as you can to avoid the 3 or 5% that establishments charge you to pay by card.
• If you can, try to pay by bank transfer for the safaris or to the travel agency: with Trip to Help, you will be able to pay by transfer and cash in Tanzania.
• It is important that the money reaches the local communities and not just a very few people. Going on safari is expensive and the tourist’s money almost never reaches the local people.
• Get post-2009 dollars to be accepted everywhere in Tanzania.