[fullspectrumdev]

Recently I found that in a few of the more touristic areas in Ireland (which I rarely visit, being from here, was showing friends some places), a lot of pubs will offer a foreign exchange service of dubious legitimacy with debatably fair rates.

Same thing in the border counties up north - you can often spend or exchange Sterling and Euro currency, but the rates will suck.

In the 1990’s where I grew up, one of the two shops in the village was basically a room off one of the pubs. The other, larger shop was also the post office, hardware store, etc.

[rsynnott]

This is common in tourist-y areas everywhere. I was in Lisbon recently, and saw a number of places advertising that they accepted Sterling… at a rate of 1:1 with the Euro. A mere 15% FX fee.

[fullspectrumdev]

What struck me as interesting is that one could do FX easily in a pub out in Blarney near the castle, while there’s not a single FX place in Cork City itself. Same thing in Galway - can’t find a FX place anywhere in the city, but if you head out to one of the tourist destinations you can do so at the pub.

You can’t do foreign exchange at a bank or credit union anymore without an account.

[Symbiote]

There are 3 or 4. You may need to search "bureau de change"

http://www.locallife.ie/county-cork/bureaux-de-change.asp

[rsynnott]

Most post offices will do it, I think. I bought dollar notes in one a while back without any difficulty. But yeah, it’s not really a business banks would want to be in; if you’re doing it honestly it’s not very profitable, and it can be quite… money-launder-y. Best bet for non-eurozone tourists would be to use a neobank (Revolut etc)/pseudo-bank (Wise etc) that offers fair FX rates, and then use an ATM.

[toast0]

If your home bank isn't too nickle and dimey and is not super tiny, you can probably use ATMs to get cash in foreign countries at decent rates.

You might do better with something FX oriented, but the difference might be small enough to not care.

[araes]

> You can’t do foreign exchange at a bank

(Somewhat rant, not really at you, just...What?) It's difficult to believe I'm even reading that. An institution that only deals with currency, and literally has almost no downside to accepting any customer for currency exchange ... won't accept currency exchange?

Most banks have far more resources that an FX stall to verify whether you're handing over junk.

There was a story last month about how banks are the only people left who can even determine whether "fake" Euro coins are fake because they're too high quality "fakes". Counterfeiters are cranking out magnetic, weight matching, material matching, currency that's nearly mint quality. And banks won't even do ForEx? People over in Eastern Europe have just given up. Don't even bother using banks, cause the banks will just tell you all the money's fake.

(TLDR; Feel free to ignore, this entire situation seems idiotic. Like humans just keep rushing towards dumb results.)

[rsynnott]

> and literally has almost no downside to accepting any customer for currency exchange

So, there are a few things going on. First of all, there are downsides; in particular, it’s a money laundering risk. But also, it’s logistically expensive; the bank has to keep a stock of foreign money, and occupy an actual human dealing with it, and, these days, the rates they can reasonably charge for it are pretty low.

If you’re looking for someone to blame for this, probably primarily blame the free market. Traditionally, banks did physical FX, at rates that were generally a horrendous ripoff, but all consumer FX was a horrendous ripoff so what were you going to do. Today, it’s possible for consumers to do FX with costs in the 0.5% range, lower for large amounts or if they pay upfront for Revolut’s premium plan or something. This doesn’t leave much margin for the banks if they want to be even vaguely competitive, so they’re only going to do it if it’s cheap to do. It is not cheap to do.

This is actually generally a positive outcome for most consumers; FX is much cheaper and more convenient than it used to be for more people; it’s only if you want to exchange physical money that it has become more difficult.