Lari, ATMs and paying by card in Georgia

How much cash you actually need to carry

Georgia is not a cashless country, whatever your bank’s travel page might suggest. Tbilisi’s restaurants, supermarkets and mid-range hotels take cards without fuss, and contactless has become the default for anything over about 5 ₾ in the capital — the same is largely true of the malls and design shops covered in the Tbilisi shopping guide. Step outside that bubble, though, and lari in your pocket stops being optional.

Marchroutkas (the shared minibuses that cover most of the country) are cash-only, Dezerter Bazaar and almost every other market stall is cash-only, small family-run guesthouses in places like Kazbegi, Mestia or Sighnaghi often have no card machine at all, and public toilets, parking attendants and the woman selling churchkhela by the roadside will only ever want notes. A workable rule for a first trip: keep 150–250 ₾ on you at any time outside Tbilisi, more if you are heading into Svaneti or Tusheti for several days where the nearest ATM might be hours away.

a private airport transfer that includes an unlimited-data SIM solves two arrival problems in one booking — a car waiting at the terminal, and a working phone before you have found an ATM — which matters more than it sounds on a first night when every taxi driver in the arrivals hall is quoting a different price.

Where to withdraw lari, and where not to

Bank of Georgia and TBC Bank run the two dominant ATM networks, and their machines are the ones to look for. Both are common at Tbilisi International Airport, in every shopping mall, and along the main commercial streets of any town with more than a few thousand people. Liberty Bank machines are also widespread and generally fine. What you want to avoid is the handful of standalone currency-exchange-and-ATM combos that appear near tourist strips with unusually generous “0% commission!” signage; these often use a poor built-in exchange rate that costs more than a flat fee would, dressed up as a free service.

When a Georgian ATM asks whether you want it to do the currency conversion (“Do you accept this exchange rate?”) or let your card’s network handle it, always choose to be charged in lari, not in your home currency. The ATM’s own conversion rate is reliably worse than what Visa or Mastercard will apply once the transaction reaches your bank. This is the single most common way travellers overpay without realising it, and it costs the same 3–5% whether you are withdrawing at the airport or in a Tbilisi suburb.

Outside the four main cities — Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi and Rustavi — ATM coverage thins out fast. Sighnaghi, Telavi and Borjomi each have a small number of machines in the town centre, usually enough. Kazbegi (Stepantsminda) has ATMs but they occasionally run out of cash on a busy weekend. Mestia has two or three; beyond it, in Ushguli or the villages of Svaneti’s high valleys, there are none. Withdraw what you need before you leave the last town with a bank branch.

Card acceptance: better than you’d expect, worse than you’d hope

Tbilisi restaurants, hotels, chain supermarkets (Carrefour, Goodwill, Fresco, Spar) and most shops in the centre and Vake take Visa and Mastercard without issue, and contactless payment through a phone works at the same places a physical card does. Batumi’s hotel strip and central Kutaisi follow the same pattern. Where cards get unreliable is smaller, family-run restaurants — even in central Tbilisi, a place can be full and clearly doing well while still only taking cash, because the card terminal fee eats into thin margins on a 15 ₾ khinkali order. Always ask before you sit down if you are relying on a card and would be stuck without cash.

American Express is accepted at a much smaller set of places than Visa or Mastercard — mostly international hotel chains — so do not count on it as your primary card. A second, low-fee travel card as backup is worth having, since a blocked or swallowed card with no alternative is a genuinely bad problem to have outside Tbilisi.

What things cost, so you can spot a fair price

Rough day-to-day prices, useful for judging whether you are being quoted fairly:

• Metro ride: 1 ₾ flat fare, any distance, using a Metromoney card
• Urban marchroutka: around 1 ₾
• Bolt ride across central Tbilisi: typically 5–12 ₾ depending on distance and time of day
• Khinkali: 1–1.5 ₾ per piece in an ordinary place
• Khachapuri: 8–15 ₾ depending on type and where you order it
• A sit-down meal for one in a mid-range Tbilisi taverna: 25–40 ₾
• A private hour in a sulphur bath house: 60–150 ₾ depending on the room and time of day
• A bed in a hostel dorm: 25–40 ₾; a private room in a guesthouse: 40–70 ₾
• A mid-range hotel double room: 150–300 ₾

See Khinkali: how to order and how to eat them and Restaurant etiquette, service charges and tipping for more on eating-out costs specifically, What a week in Georgia actually costs for a full trip budget broken down by travel style, and What things cost in Georgia in 2026 for a snapshot of how prices have moved recently. Readers who want line-by-line real numbers rather than ranges may prefer A week in Georgia: the real receipts.

Currency exchange: booths versus banks versus the airport

Licensed exchange booths (look for a visible rate board and a company name, not an unmarked window) cluster on Rustaveli Avenue, around Freedom Square, and near Liberty Square and the Dry Bridge — and Georgians themselves use these, which is a reasonable trust signal. Rates genuinely vary between booths a few hundred metres apart, sometimes by a percent or more, so it is worth comparing two or three boards rather than exchanging at the first one you pass, particularly for a larger amount.

Bank branches also exchange currency, usually at a slightly less generous rate than the best street booths but with more accountability if something goes wrong. Airport exchange, on arrival at Tbilisi International, is workable for the first 100 ₾ or so you need on the taxi and dinner but not the rate to use for a whole trip’s worth of cash — the spread between buy and sell prices at the airport tends to be wider than in the city centre.

Whichever booth you use, count the cash before you step away from the window, and know the current rate to within a few percent before you exchange anything, so an obviously bad quote is easy to spot. A rough mental benchmark — roughly 2.9–3.0 lari to the euro — is enough to catch a booth that is quoting you 2.6 or 2.7 and hoping you won’t notice.

Digital wallets and phone payments

Apple Pay and Google Pay both work at any terminal that accepts contactless Visa or Mastercard, which by now covers most of central Tbilisi’s shops, cafés and the metro system’s tap-to-pay gates. It is a genuinely convenient way to avoid carrying a card at all for city spending, though it does not solve the cash-only problem for marchroutkas, markets or small guesthouses, so it supplements rather than replaces having lari on you. A local eSIM or physical SIM makes digital payments and navigation far more reliable outside Wi-Fi range; see SIM cards, eSIM and mobile data for the practical setup.

Tbilisi: Welcome Tour with Optional Airport Pickup Esim is a useful first-day option if you would rather have a local guide walk you through the metro card, an ATM and a SIM setup in person than work it out alone with jet lag.

Where prices are quoted differently to how you’d expect

A few situations catch first-time visitors off guard. Taxis and Bolt drivers who approach you directly at the airport or a taxi rank, rather than through the Bolt app, will almost always quote a higher fare than the app would, sometimes considerably higher — see Scams, overcharging and minor annoyances for how this specific situation tends to play out and how to avoid it. Souvenir shops around the old town and the cable car station occasionally have two price levels depending on whether the seller thinks you know local prices; asking a Georgian friend or your guesthouse host what something should cost is not paranoid, it is normal practice.

Batumi: Tbilisi Private Transfer removes the airport taxi negotiation entirely by fixing the price before you land, which is worth the modest premium for a first arrival when you have no baseline for what a fair fare looks like.

Marchroutkas, minibuses and paying the driver directly

Long-distance marchroutkas between cities are paid in cash, usually to the driver or a conductor once you board, and drivers do not always carry much change, so breaking a 100 ₾ note on a 40 ₾ fare can be genuinely difficult. Carry smaller denominations — 5, 10 and 20 ₾ notes — for exactly this reason. See How marshrutkas actually work for routes, schedules and the informal boarding conventions that a fixed timetable does not explain.

Card fraud and skimming: a realistic risk assessment

Card fraud in Georgia is not a major concern at legitimate ATMs and card terminals, but it is sensible to apply the same precautions you would anywhere: cover the keypad when entering a PIN, avoid ATMs in isolated or poorly lit spots at night, and prefer machines attached to a bank branch over free-standing ones in a side street. If a card is lost or a transaction looks wrong, most international banks let you freeze the card instantly through their app, which is worth doing immediately rather than waiting to call a helpline from abroad.

Regional differences: Tbilisi versus everywhere else

Money behaves differently once you leave the capital. Batumi’s seafront hotel strip runs almost as card-friendly as Tbilisi, since much of its business caters to package tourists from the Gulf and elsewhere in the former Soviet Union who expect to pay by card. Kutaisi, smaller and more functional, has good ATM coverage in the centre but noticeably patchier card acceptance in restaurants once you’re two streets off the main square.

The mountains are where the cash-only rule tightens hardest. In Kazbegi, most guesthouses and small cafés want cash, and while there are ATMs in the town centre, a big weekend can occasionally empty them — arriving with more lari than you think you need is the safer plan than assuming a machine will have cash when you get there.

In Svaneti, Mestia has limited ATM access and Ushguli has none at all, so anyone heading into the high valleys should withdraw in Kutaisi or Zugdidi before the drive up. Kakheti’s wine towns, Sighnaghi and Telavi, sit in between — enough ATMs to get by, but wineries and family-run tasting rooms overwhelmingly prefer cash, partly because card terminal fees eat harder into a 20 ₾ tasting than a 40 ₾ restaurant bill.

What to do if a card is declined or a machine keeps it

A card that gets swallowed by an ATM is rare but not unheard of, usually caused by a PIN entered incorrectly more than once or a connection timeout mid-transaction. If it happens, the machine belongs to a specific bank branch — Bank of Georgia and TBC both have English-speaking phone support, and a branch during opening hours can usually retrieve a card the same day if you have your passport. It is one more reason to carry a second card as backup rather than relying on a single piece of plastic for an entire trip.

A card that is simply declined at a shop or restaurant is more often the terminal or the network than genuine insufficient funds — some smaller establishments run older card machines that occasionally fail to connect, and trying again a minute later, or switching to a different card, resolves it more often than you’d expect. Foreign transaction blocks from your own bank, triggered by unusual activity in a country you have not flagged as a travel destination, are the other common cause; letting your bank know your travel dates before you leave avoids this entirely.

Travel cards worth considering before you go

A fee-free multi-currency travel card — the kind that converts at the interbank rate with no markup and no foreign ATM fee — is the single easiest way to reduce what a Georgia trip costs on the money side, since it removes both the ATM’s own fee (where one applies) and your home bank’s foreign transaction charge at the same time. It is worth setting one up a week or two before departure rather than at the airport, since some providers take a few days to verify identity documents and post a physical card if you want one, though a virtual card usually works immediately for contactless payments through a phone.

Whichever card or cash mix you land on, having at least two independent ways to pay — one card plus a cash reserve, or two cards from different providers — is the practical safety net. A single lost, blocked or swallowed card should be an inconvenience on a Georgia trip, not a crisis, and it only takes a small amount of planning before departure to make sure it stays that way.

A simple system that works

For a two-week trip: withdraw a moderate amount on day one or two once you have located a Bank of Georgia or TBC machine, use a card for hotels, restaurants and shopping in Tbilisi and Batumi, and top up cash before any multi-day excursion into the mountains or a region without reliable ATMs. Keep a small emergency reserve of cash separate from your daily spending money, and know roughly what things should cost using the price list above, so an inflated quote is easy to catch before you pay it rather than after.

Frequently asked questions about money in Georgia

What is the currency in Georgia?

The Georgian lari (GEL, ₾), split into 100 tetri. It floats freely and has traded at roughly 2.9–3.0 lari to the euro in recent years, though it is worth checking a live rate before you travel.

Can I pay in euros or dollars in Georgia?

Rarely, and you should not plan to. A few upmarket hotels and Gudauri ski operators quote in foreign currency for booking, but day-to-day spending is all in lari, and places that do take foreign cash tend to give a poor rate on the change.

Are ATMs common in Georgia?

Yes, in Tbilisi, Batumi, Kutaisi and every town of any size — look for Bank of Georgia or TBC Bank machines. Small mountain villages such as Juta or Ushguli usually have none, so withdraw before heading into the hills.

Do Georgian ATMs charge foreign withdrawal fees?

Some do, shown on screen before you confirm, and you can decline and try another machine if so. Your home bank may add its own foreign transaction fee separately; a fee-free travel card avoids both.

Should I exchange money before arriving in Georgia?

No. Airport exchange is workable for the first evening but not the best rate in the country — Tbilisi’s licensed street booths, especially around Rustaveli Avenue and Freedom Square, usually beat both the airport and the banks.

Is it safe to use street currency exchange booths in Georgia?

The licensed ones, with a visible rate board and company name, are legitimate and used by Georgians themselves. Compare two or three boards before committing, since rates vary more than expected between booths a short walk apart.

What is a normal tip in Georgian lari?

Ten percent in a restaurant with table service, if a service charge has not already been added — check the bill first. Taxi drivers do not expect a tip beyond rounding up; guides on multi-day tours are the usual exception.