Money and Cash Withdrawals

If you want to change currency, you can bring euros or dollars. You can usually do a money withdrawal at the airport on arrival.

There is chronic misunderstanding about money withdrawals by travellers in Brazil. The situation often changes so advice is outdated quickly. Do not assume that a cash withdrawal can be done everywere if you are travelling outside the larger tourist resorts.

In the larger tourists resorts, money withdrawals are usually no problem for foreigners. In case there is a problem, there is an airport nearby were you can probably do your withdrawal. In the medium-sized and smaller cities, money withdrawals by foreigners are often more complicated. Although there are many cash points displaying MasterCard, Visa and Cirrus logo’s, most of them do not allow withdrawals from foreign bank accounts. Accept for that, the situation often changes quickly. In 1998, almost every cash point of the Banco do Brasil (the largest Brazilian bank) allowed money withdrawal with a Visa-card. MasterCard was mainly accepted for payments, not for money withdrawals from foreign bank accounts. In the year 2000 however, MasterCard was the credit card for money withdrawals in Brazil. In other words: do not believe information of your bank, your credit card company, other travellers or even of us too quickly! Check all information.

Some guidelines:

• The fact that a Brazilian cash point displays the symbols of MasterCard, Visa or Cirrus does not mean that your foreign cards can be used for money withdrawal at this cash point. For example, the city of Londrina in the state of Paraná resembles North-American or European cities. There are cash points in almost every important street displaying the symbols of MasterCard, Visa and Cirrus. Yet, in December 2004 only one cash point in this entire city accepted foreign cards. Not even the higher staff of the better hotels knew about this cash point. The cash point was found with the help of some other foreigners.
• Always bring a combination of credit cards and bank cards. It is a way of spreading risks. The electronic systems of MasterCard and Cirrus seem to be highly integrated: if a cash point accepts MasterCard, it is likely that it accepts Cirrus too. Bring at least two of these cards to have one as a back up. Visa seems to make use of another system. By adding a Visa card to your collection, you depend less on the MasterCard/Cirrus system.
• Not all cash points and offices of the same bank are the same. Often, some cash point do not accept a foreign card while others of the same bank do.
• The American bank Citibank has offices in the larger cities. You can often do a manual withdrawal at this bank during office hours.
• Do a money withdrawal at arrival on the airport. It is generally cheaper than buying Brazilian currency in your own country.
• Hide some rolls of American dollar or Euro for emergencies. Never bring to much cash for security reasons and never take too little cash as it makes you too dependent on cash points.
• Make copies of your credit cards and your bankcard. Write the phone numbers that you can use to block these cards on these copies. Hide them in several pieces of luggage as you do with copies of your passports, visa and insurance papers. In case you lose your cards, you can quickly block them. Your bank and credit card companies can provide more instructions for safe use of credit cards.