Money in Tanzania

Tanzanian currency

The Tanzanian shilling (Ts) is the national currency. It’s fairly stable. Local currency cannot be imported except by residents of Tanzania, Kenya and Uganda, and cannot be exported. For the current rates of exchange visit the expedia.com site.

Cash, travellers’ cheques or credit cards in Tanzania?

The question therefore is: in what form should you carry your money to Tanzania, ie: should you bring travellers’ cheques, cash, or rely solely on your credit card and use that to get money out of cashpoints in Tanzania?

Travellers’ cheques in Tanzania

Unfortunately, the answer is not a simple one, as each have their advantages. Travellers’ cheques are regarded as the safest way to bring money to Tanzania because they are replaceable. On the other hand, travellers’ cheques are bulky and the rates you get are generally inferior to those you get for cash.

Bringing cash to Tanzania

Foreign currency can be imported and exported without limit to and from Tanzania. Dollars and, to a lesser extent, sterling and euros are the best currencies to bring. Tanzanian banks usually offer a better rate for cash (US dollars are the only widely accepted currency) than for travellers’ cheques and cash is very useful for those occasions when the Tanzanian shilling is not accepted, such as when paying for upmarket hotel rooms and air tickets, both of which, officially at least, must be paid for in hard currency. The disadvantage with cash is that it is the riskiest way to carry money.

Credit cards in Tanzania

Then there’s the third option, credit cards, which are the easiest to carry around. Credit cards are useful in major tourist hotels, restaurants, gift shops and airline offices and their usefulness is growing every day. Visa is probably the more useful card in that you can withdraw money from more ATMs than with MasterCard.

However, if you bring credit/debit cards, you run the risk that the cash machines will reject them or, worse, swallow them, leaving you stuck in Africa with no means of support.

Overall…

Thus, we advocate bringing all three forms. That is to say, bring most of your money in travellers’ cheques, a few hundred dollars in cash and a credit/debit card for back up. True, many experienced African hands advocate eschewing travellers’ cheques and bringing cash and credit cards/debit cards only, particularly as cashpoints are becoming more and more common. But having tried unsuccessfully to get money out of any Standard Chartered bank in Tanzania on our last trip, we were glad that we’d brought with us a whole heap of travellers’ cheques – and you may be too.

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