The Currency Desk
Live rates for the currencies of the collection — and the quiet rules of how money is actually exchanged when the amount matters.
Fetching today's mid-market rates…
Enter an amount to see the exchange.
The quiet rules
The airport kiosk and the hotel front desk buy your convenience at the worst price in the building — the rate on the board can sit ten per cent or more from the real one. Insiders walk past both. The exception is the bureau tucked into the shopping streets of a big city, where competition keeps the margins honest.
A bank's own cash machine in the arrivals hall, drawn on a card that charges no foreign fee, gives you close to the interbank rate — the one banks use with each other. When the machine offers to charge you in your home currency, decline it and take the local one; that 'helpful' conversion is the kiosk in disguise.
A multi-currency account lets you hold the currency before you fly and spend it like a local when you land. The elite version of this is simply a bank that doesn't punish you for crossing a border — the mechanics are now available to anyone.
When the sum is serious — a villa deposit, a charter week, a piece at auction — the rate matters more than the convenience, and a private banker's foreign-exchange desk will quote a margin a kiosk never could. This is one of the quiet reasons the wealthy stay wealthy: they never exchange money at retail.
In most of the collection's cities, cards are accepted everywhere that matters. Cash is for the small courtesies — the porter, the housekeeper, the gondolier — and for the markets and cafés that still prefer it. Carry some, never much.
No — this is the mid-market reference rate, the midpoint banks use between themselves. Every provider adds a margin or fee on top; the notes above explain where the margin is smallest.
Rarely at a high-street counter. A card with no foreign fee, a multi-currency account, or a bank cash machine on arrival will almost always beat buying notes in advance.
Speak to your bank's foreign-exchange desk before you move the money — on a serious sum, a quoted margin beats any app. If you'd like an introduction to a private bank or currency specialist, partners may apply through List with us.
Rates are provided for general information by a public reference source and may be delayed. Velori is a digital planning membership — it does not exchange currency, hold client funds or provide financial advice. Always confirm the final rate with your provider.