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Usually I only travel with payment cards, and I use a debit card in my destination's airport to withdraw cash at an ATM.

Me and my significant other will soon return home (the UK) from a third country, with a multiple-days layover in UAE (for tourism). After we made the booking, we realized that while travelling we'd be able to move some savings from the third country in cash (transfering money from that country was already notoriously difficult years ago, and recent sanctions and boycotts made it even harder: we tried to get them home with a remittance (wire?) transfer but it bounced. It's been 6 months and we are still waiting to get the money back to the sending bank, just to give you an idea on how difficult it is).

This amount is a small fraction of the AED 60000 limit (about 16000 USD) over which cash needs to be declared, but since I always travel with a minimum amount of cash, I'm still feeling a bit uncomfortable about having it with me for multiple days.

Of course, me and my significant other would split it between us, and probably split it further to keep it safe in multiple places while travelling. I was then thinking:

  • keep a good chunk of it in a safe in the hotel room, but that's probably not as as secure as...
  • a safety deposit box at the hotel's front desk (is that actually safer? would the hotel insurance cover that, or would I need to prepare extra precautions?)
  • convert it as a non-transferrable cheque (which wouldn't be able to be pocketed by someone else, unlike a bearer cheque or actual cash)... but is that even doable internationally? Which bank would do that, and wouldn't one have to be their customer anyhow?
  • try to send it via some remittance service (it's probably fairly reliable, given how developed the financial sector is in UAE, but if something goes wrong, and it would be sent back... it'd probably be a pain to sort out, involving at least another trip to the UAE)
  • open a bank account with a local bank, and deposit the amount (it seems to be possible to open bank accounts as non-resident, even if that would be restricted to savings accounts, instead of current accounts)... and then just withdrawing everything before taking the next flight (or send everything with a wire transfer).

Is there any other solution that I'm missing? What is the usual solution, for other people in a similar situation?

TripeHound
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berdario
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3 Answers3

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The simplest answer is "don't". Folks used to solve this with travelers' checks. These days credit cards are the easiest solution, and if you need cash it's often possible to make a withdrawal using your bank's ATM card. You may not even pay more in currency exchange fees than you would elsewhere.

Unload excess cash ASAP by sending it home or depositing it back into your credit card; a bank can probably do either for you.

You don't carry more than a certain amount of cash when travelling to a city in your home country because you might get robbed. Don't carry more than you can afford to lose overseas either, and probably not more than the equivalent spending value of what you do at home.

keshlam
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We ended up travelling, and getting the money back home. Everything went well, but our solution was still suboptimal, what we tried:

Open a bank account with a local bank

While true that it's possible to open a bank account in the UAE as a non-resident, and I've been able to book an appointment with HSBC....

When I spoke with them, they actually disclosed that it's possible to open an account only if you already have ties with the country (e.g. if you bought property in the UAE).

Without employment or property in the UAE, it has not been possible to open an account there, the same restriction appears to apply with most other banks, but I didn't want to spend the whole holiday moving from one bank to another.

HSBC has a "Premier Global" service, which should help with opening an account for people in this situation. I've been a HSBC customer in the UK in the past, but I never bothered with trying to open a "Premier" account, and thus I wasn't worth enough as a customer to HSBC for them to help me in the UAE.

We opened a bank account in Turkiye in the past (we first obtained a temporary Turkish tax id), so depending on the country that you're travelling through, this might still be a feasible solution.

Ask for a safety deposit box at the hotel's front desk

The hotel pushed us to use the room's safe instead, and dismissed any concern that it could be not secure enough. I pushed a little bit, but they genuinely didn't offer it as a possibility.

Keep a good chunk of it in a safe in the hotel room

This is what we ended up doing. ‍♂️

berdario
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One thing I have learned from TikTok is that if you are in another country and using a debit card during the atm period. It should allow you to convert it multiple times, and you want to decline it until the transaction voids. Once it voids, you will know how often they offer different exchange rates. (this is not paid) If you have a Charles Schwab debit card, you pay no fees on international transactions or atm fees.

After the exchange rates are bypassed from the atm, you can withdraw whatever amount from the debit card account in the currency of your location or the atm. I can personally attest to taking out about 400 euros (in two separate transactions for the best rate possible from Charles Schwab, about 240 USD at the time compared to the 350 USD the atm was offering to take out of my account.

mendesd
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