Egypt Currency: What to Bring and How to Pay

Egypt currency: what is the Egyptian pound?

The currency is the Egyptian pound. Its code is EGP, it is written locally as LE — from the French livre égyptienne — or as E£, and in Arabic it is the gineih. One pound divides into 100 piastres, but piastres have been eaten by inflation and the one-pound coin is about as small as money gets in practice. Notes in general circulation run from five pounds up to two hundred. The ten and twenty exist as both paper and plastic notes with different designs, which catches people out when they count quickly.

Prices you read in older articles are unreliable. The pound has lost a lot of value against sterling and the euro over the past few years, and the country has had high inflation alongside it, so figures from even two or three years ago mean little now. Treat any specific price you find online as a rough shape rather than a number to budget against.

Why can't I buy Egyptian pounds before I fly?

In practice the Egyptian pound is a closed currency. Banks and bureaux outside Egypt rarely stock it, and where one does the spread is punishing. There are also legal limits on how much cash you may carry in or out, set by the central bank and revised from time to time, so check the current figure if you plan to move a large amount. Bring hard currency and change it after you land.

There used to be a reason to look for a street rate. Until the float in 2024 a parallel market paid noticeably more for dollars, and plenty of visitors used it. That gap has since narrowed to the point where the risk is not worth taking. Anyone approaching you now with a special rate is selling you a short-count, not a bargain. Use a bank or a licensed exchange office.

Cards or cash: where does each actually work?

Take cash as your default and cards as a convenience. Cairo takes cards far more than it did five years ago: hotels, supermarkets, pharmacies, chain cafés and most mid-range and upper restaurants will run a Visa or Mastercard, and a growing number of major sites sell tickets by card at the window or online in advance. American Express is patchy. Contactless is normal in the capital and much less so outside it.

Cash covers everything else, and everything else is a lot: taxis and tuk-tuks, juice bars and bakeries, market stalls, village shops, boatmen, toilets, and every tip. Outside Cairo — Luxor, Aswan, the oases, the Red Sea towns once you step off hotel grounds — assume cash first and treat a working terminal as luck. Terminals also drop offline for hours when the connection goes, so never run your cash to zero.

Travel money cards do not solve this. The multi-currency cards British and European travellers carry do not hold Egyptian pounds, so a payment converts from your home balance at your provider's rate. That part is usually fine. What is not fine is accepting the terminal's offer to charge you in sterling or euros: that rate is set by the machine's operator and it is always worse. Choose pounds.

What should I know about ATMs in Egypt?

ATMs are common in cities and tourist areas. Use one attached to a bank branch where you can. Standalone machines in tourist strips, especially those branded by international ATM operators rather than Egyptian banks, charge more and convert worse. Expect a fee from the Egyptian machine on top of your own bank's, and a per-transaction cap lower than you would like, which can mean two withdrawals in a row.

Machines also run dry. Around long public holidays, Eid in particular, and across the Friday–Saturday weekend, popular ATMs empty and are not always refilled quickly. Withdraw before a holiday rather than during it. Use a machine during branch hours where you can: one that swallows a card in the evening leaves you waiting until the branch reopens, and there is nobody outside to open it for you.

Euros, dollars or sterling: what should I bring?

All three change without trouble in Cairo. US dollars are the most widely recognised and the most likely to be taken by a small exchange office in a provincial town. Euros are close behind. Sterling is fine in the cities but there are fewer counters for it and the spread is a little worse, so if you are coming from Britain and already hold euros or dollars, bring those.

Condition matters more than most people expect. Banks and exchange offices refuse foreign notes that are torn, written on, marked or badly creased, and older-series US dollar bills — the small-portrait designs — are often rejected outright or taken at a discount. Ask for new, clean, high-denomination notes when you buy your currency at home. Scottish and Northern Irish banknotes are frequently turned away; bring Bank of England ones.

Why do small notes matter so much?

This is the detail that changes your week. Egypt runs on small cash: a few pounds for the man watching the cars, the porter, the bathroom attendant, the person who fetches a chair. Nobody has change, or nobody admits to it. Hand over a 200 note for a small service and you get either a long negotiation or a shrug, and you lose the difference.

So build a float on purpose. Break big notes where you are already spending — supermarkets, hotel bars, cafés — and ask for fives, tens and twenties. Keep them separate from your main wallet so you are not fanning a thick stack out in the street. Guides and drivers can usually swap notes for you. And you are allowed to decline: a firm la, shukran ends most approaches without any friction.

How does tipping work?

Tipping, baksheesh, is part of how these jobs are paid rather than a bonus on top. Amounts are small, frequency is high. Restaurants normally add a service charge and tax to the bill, and that service charge does not reliably reach the person who served you, so a modest cash tip left on the table is standard. Round taxi fares up. Small notes for porters and housekeeping.

Guides, drivers and boat crew on a multi-day trip are the larger ones, usually handed over at the end rather than daily and worked out per traveller per day. The going range shifts with inflation, so ask your operator what is current when you book instead of trusting a five-year-old blog. Two honest points: the constant tipping tires some visitors out, and you owe nothing to someone who inserted himself into your day uninvited.

What are the common scams around change and exchange?

Most of it is small and opportunistic rather than threatening. The standard moves: counting your change quickly and closing a hand around it; handing back a twenty when you gave a two hundred and relying on you not to look; a price that turns out to have been per person, or per photograph. Paper and plastic notes of the same value look different, which makes fast counting easy to get wrong. Count what you are handed, openly, before you walk off.

Keep your exchange receipts, and ignore 'no commission' signs, because the margin sits in the rate rather than a fee. Look up the day's rate from a neutral source before you walk in, and compare what you are offered against it. Airport counters are fine for a first small amount and worse than town for the rest; hotel desks are worse again. And a taxi meter is rarely broken — use a ride-hailing app where one runs.