Lari, cards and cash: paying for things in Georgia

The lari, and what it is worth

The currency is the lari, written GEL in the banking system and ₾ on price tags. One lari splits into a hundred tetri. Notes run five, ten, twenty, fifty and a hundred lari; coins go one and two lari, then down through fifty, twenty, ten and five tetri. Both older and newer note designs circulate side by side.

Rates move, so check on the day you fly rather than trusting a figure printed in a guide. Over recent years the lari has traded broadly somewhere between two and a half and three to the US dollar, and close to three to the euro. Treat that as an order of magnitude and nothing more precise.

What matters more than the rate is the split between card and cash. In Tbilisi and Batumi you can spend a week barely touching a banknote. Three hours up a mountain road, a card is a piece of plastic with a chip in it, and the guesthouse owner will quietly expect lari in her hand after breakfast.

Changing money without losing on it

Exchange booths are everywhere in Georgian cities: a window, a board with four rates, and no commission when the board says so. Compare two boards within a block and you will usually find a spread of a few tetri per dollar, which across a few hundred dollars is somebody's lunch.

The worst rates in the country are at the airport, and they are worst at night when nothing else is open. Change enough for a taxi and a coffee, then do the rest in town the next morning. Booths near Freedom Square and around Station Square in Tbilisi quote sharper numbers than anywhere sitting under a departures board.

Where a card actually works

Visa and Mastercard are read almost everywhere that has a terminal at all, and contactless is standard: restaurants, supermarkets, pharmacies, museums, city taxis booked through an app. Phone payments work wherever the terminal is modern, which in Tbilisi and Batumi is most of them. American Express is a coin toss.

The real divide is not city against country but business against person. A supermarket chain has a terminal. A woman selling churchkhela at a mountain pass does not, and nor does a marshrutka driver, a neighbourhood bakery, most of the Dezerter Bazaar, or a village guesthouse that has been taking guests for thirty years.

ATMs, and which ones take a cut

ATMs are dense in the cities and thin outside them. The two big networks are Bank of Georgia and TBC: reliable, well lit, often inside a small vestibule you enter with the card. Liberty Bank covers the small towns the others skip, frequently inside or beside the post office.

Fees are the moving part and nobody can promise you a number. Georgian banks may add a charge on a foreign card on top of whatever your own bank levies, and it changes without notice; withdrawals in the 5–15 GEL range (2025) are commonly reported, while some machines take nothing. The screen shows it before you confirm, so read it and cancel if it is steep.

The cash economy begins where the tarmac ends

Svaneti, Tusheti, Racha and the higher villages around Kazbegi run on notes. Mestia has ATMs, but there are few of them and in August they empty. Ushguli has none. Omalo has none, and often not enough signal for a card terminal to reach a bank even if one appeared tomorrow.

So plan the wad before you leave the lowlands. Zugdidi is the last comfortable place to draw money for Svaneti; Stepantsminda has banks, but treat them as a top-up rather than a plan. Reckon a guesthouse night with dinner at roughly 70–140 GEL (2025) per person, add transport, horses or a jeep transfer, then add a margin for the day you did not schedule.

Tipping, and the line already on the bill

Most sit-down restaurants in Tbilisi and Batumi add a service charge, usually ten per cent, printed on the menu and repeated at the bottom of the bill. It goes to the house and, in the better places, on to the staff. If it is there, you have already tipped, and adding a second ten per cent is generous rather than expected.

Where no service line appears — a bakery, a khinkali counter, a village table — rounding up or leaving five to ten per cent in cash is normal and quietly appreciated. Guides and drivers on a full day are the clear exception: a tip is customary, and cash in lari handed over directly lands better than anything added to a card.

What the small things actually cost

The prices that shape a day are small and stubborn. A metro or bus ride in Tbilisi is about 1 GEL (2025), and the gate will read a contactless bank card. Bread from a bakery runs 1–3 GEL (2025). A marshrutka from Didube out to Stepantsminda sits somewhere around 15–25 GEL (2025), paid to the driver in notes as you board.

The bigger numbers need more hedging. A city taxi across Tbilisi booked in an app usually lands in the 5–15 GEL (2025) band, a cellar tasting in Kakheti starts around 10–25 GEL (2025), and a summer room in Tbilisi is a different order altogether. We keep a fuller breakdown in the day-costs piece rather than repeating it here.

Kiosks, apps and the tyranny of the hundred

Self-service payment kiosks stand on street corners, in supermarket lobbies and in petrol stations. Georgians use them for phone top-ups, utility bills and taxi accounts; TBC Pay is the name you will see most. They swallow notes, rarely give change, and hide the English button somewhere on the first screen. For a visitor the honest use is topping up a local SIM.

Then keep small notes. A hundred-lari note is what an ATM likes to dispense and precisely what a bakery, a marshrutka driver or a market stall cannot break at nine in the morning. Split the big ones in supermarkets and pharmacies as you go, and hold on to tens and twenties for the road.

Five mistakes, so you skip them

None of these is ruinous on its own, but they compound over two weeks — and the first one quietly pays for a restaurant meal twice.

Questions people ask about money