Money in Istanbul: Cash, Cards & Currency Tips for Tourists

So you've come to Istanbul, you're wondering where can you change money, where can you withdraw money, what is the tipping culture, can you use card or is it cash only? Today in this video we're going to answer all of these questions. My name is Emre and welcome to Istanbul. In this channel we guide Istanbul. So the first question is which ATM has the lowest fee? Now in Turkey ATMs depending on the bank will charge anywhere from 0% to 14%. So which one is it? Now there's an app called ATM Fee Saver. You download this app, it's completely free and this app depending on your location will show you the nearest ATM with the lowest fee. It even has descriptions, it even has tips so when you open the ATM screen so what you should click to avoid paying high fees and taxes. So the second question is it card or is it cash? Now in Turkey in Istanbul you can use card pretty much anywhere and everywhere like you don't need to carry cash to be able to eat or go to a museum. You can use card everywhere in cafes, restaurants, museums, shops, stores, even in kiosks like this where you just want to stop by to grab a quick snack or maybe a bottle of water you can use card for that. But you might still need some cash for street food. So for example you want to buy a bagel on the street we call this simit in Turkey. You want to buy a simit you will need some small change in Turkish liras or maybe you don't want to you know spend time with your card putting the pin code or whatever you might have a little bit of cash with you when it comes to buying something from a kiosk or maybe you want to tip someone like who gave you a little service. Having a bit of cash with you is always useful. If you don't want to withdraw money from the ATM you have another option which is to change money. Changing money in Istanbul is very very easy. You don't need to go to bank to change money. All you need to find is a change office. Now there are change offices everywhere in Istanbul, in Taksim, in Sultanahmet, on the Asian side, European side. Everywhere you go you will easily find change offices and most of the time like 90-95 percent of the time they will have a great exchange rate. So here's for example look let me show you today's change rate. Look I'm I'm searching for this live right now and as you can see today it's 48.01. One euro equals 48.01 and for example in this exchange office you can see that you can change one euro for 47.3. Now you can find even better than this but this is already quite good. This is already a decent exchange rate and we are right now outside of the Grand Bazaar. Inside of the Grand Bazaar you can find even better rates but most of those exchange offices inside the Grand Bazaar will only change if you have at least a hundred euros, dollars or more than that. Then you will get like even better rates but honestly I think this is already pretty good and when you walk around the Grand Bazaar in or out of the Grand Bazaar you'll find the best rates but overall in Istanbul pretty much everywhere you go you'll find good rates but generally speaking it's a lot cheaper to change money in Turkey than to withdraw money from an ATM. What about tipping culture? You go to a restaurant do you tip or not? In Turkey we have a 10% tipping culture however in a lot of restaurants especially if it's a good restaurant the tip will already be included in the price as a service fee. Now when you go to a restaurant and you see that there's a 10% service fee included in the bill that means that's the tip so you don't need to tip on top of that but if you'd like to of course tips are always appreciated. Now if the service fee is not included in the bill they will expect you to tip up to 10% but if you're very satisfied with the service you could tip more. If you're going to have a quick bite let's say you grab a you know a doner wrap on the street and in that case you don't need to tip but if you sit down and have a proper meal they will be expecting you to tip around 10%. So now that you know all you need to know about money now it's time for shopping so we have come to the Grand Bazaar. Today the Grand Bazaar is especially beautiful you see a lot of Turkish flags today because today is the 30th of August which is a national holiday in Turkey. 30th of August is the victory day and this will be it for today's video. Guys thank you for watching and make sure to follow us for more useful tips when traveling to Istanbul.