Question Best way to get Indonesian rupiah cash?

[Lorenzoid]

I'm quite interested in TransferWise. What can you tell me about it please?

Luko's description is better than I can do, but from my perspective, TransferWise, er, Wise is essentially the same thing as Paypal. We have used TransferWise to send money to foreign companies to pay for various travel services.

 

[matts1w]

I love Wise to move money from the USA to my Indonesia accounts. It happens almost instantly, and the fees are less than half of an international bank wire. Paying people by bank transfer is super, super common here. In the US, one typically guards their bank account info., but here it is open information as most regular people do not have credit cards and the bank fees for a transfer are like 3000 Rupiah. If I were to walk into a little store and want to buy 70,000 idr in stuff and don't have cash, I whip out my phone, transfer to the owner's account, show him/her the completed transaction screen, and we are good to go. The fees on Wise are too high to make that worthwhile on a daily basis, but for large purchases like hotel rooms and paying a guide for a week or work, Wise makes perfect sense.

Wise is different than Paypal because one can go from bank to bank using Wise and the payee does not need a Wise account. One can transfer money to anyone in Indonesia with a bank account, and pretty much everyone has a bank account.

 

[chillyinCanada]

Ah, I see. Great for making payments/purchases but of no value to me personally when I'm in SE Asia for many months.

I've been trying to figure out if there's a way for me to have access to my own money. Yes, I can use ATM but want some other access for just in case events.

 

[Zenshift]

How does one “test” to see if your ATM cards will work in Jakarta and Sorong?

Is there a physical bank (must be open on Saturday) in Sorong to withdraw cash?

Any restrictions on using the money changers in the airports (ex: $100s or $50s only)?

Seems like we’ll be traveling with a suitcase of Rupiahs after exchanging $1000 usd. Lol.

 

[Luko]

Any restrictions on using the money changers in the airports (ex: $100s or $50s only)?

100USD notes are better (more interesting exchange rate), only new notes.

Seems like we’ll be traveling with a suitcase of Rupiahs after exchanging $1000 usd. Lol.

Still manageable, 150 bank notes of 100.000 rupiahs (always ask for the red 100kIDR notes otherwise they may give you the blue 50kIDR banknotes, meaning 300 bank notes)

 

[Zenshift]

100USD notes are better (more interesting exchange rate), only new notes.


Still manageable, 150 bank notes of 100.000 rupiahs (always ask for the red 100kIDR notes otherwise they may give you the blue 50kIDR banknotes, meaning 300 bank notes)

Excellent! The resort we’re headed to takes USD, so I was exaggerating a little, but traveling incognito without pulling out wads of cash is our norm. Gotta try to be as inconspicuous as possible (yes I know we’ll already stick out).

Next question: Is the Indo cultural norm to tip?

50k for coffee gets a 10k tip? 100k cab ride gets 20k tip?

 

[Dan]

Some restaurants have service charge included. If not, most of the time tips are not necessary. If you like their services, 5% tip is more than enough. For bel boys that carry my luggage to my room, I give him Rp.20k. Same with cab ride.

 

[Karen Dancheck]

FYI: Getting Rupiah before leaving the US may prove more difficult than you would expect. I bank at a very large bank and while they could provide me with around 100 physical currencies —the rupiah wasn’t one of them. Don’t really know what was up with that.

I found the ATMs fairly easy to navigate, but don’t remember if they had an English option or if I figured it out some other way (I certainly don’t speak the language ). There were two ATMs that I was forced to walk by as I left customs. One worked and the other one didn’t —maximum amount was very low (maybe $2.5 million ). Got some money there and also got some money in from the ATMs in the airport terminal the next day. Think the ones in the terminal (before ticketing/bag check ) had a higher limit—maybe $5 million. Sometimes you just have to do multiple transactions to get the money you need. Please note that in addition to ATM’s individual transaction limits, the Indonesian bank may have a daily maximum across all transactions, and your US bank likely also has a daily ATM withdrawal limit. I think the default for a lot of US banks is $500 per day but at least with my bank you can ask for a higher daily limit (probably needs to be done in a branch ).

I just brought a fair amount of US dollars with me to Indonesia and then thankfully was able to use the ATMs so I never had to bother with converting money. Also please remember that your visa on arrival needs to be paid in cash. They took US dollars. It wasn’t that much but obviously don’t travel across the world with only $20 cash in your pocket. I know some people in the US that are so used to credit cards that they repeatedly have had to borrow money from me to tip the car valet $5.

Did you tip in USD in Indo?

 

[cozcharlie]

Did you tip in USD in Indo?

I had the rupiah, so I think I gave a couple of small tips in rupiah but don’t remember. My main tip for Sorido Bay Resort was by credit card at the end of my stay. They preferred it that way since it gets shared across all the employees (think the manager flat out said if they just let people tip individually all the money would go to the divemasters and none to the cooks, servers, cleaners and maintenance people that keep the resort running ).

On the Damai I I asked at the end if they wanted a tip via credit credit card or in US dollars —they asked for the dollars. I still had rupiah but given I was 2,000 miles from leaving the country via Jakarta I wanted to hang on to those for emergencies.

 

[Karen Dancheck]

Thanks for your reply. I’m just trying to figure out how much money to take and get exchanged for a two week trip. 6 nights at Villa Markisa and a week at Wakatobi. I’d rather just take hundreds and get it exchanged. I don’t like traveling with my ATM card. My United MasterCard does not charge any foreign transaction fees but I understand that the merchants in Indonesia might.