I published an article
How to change money in Sydney some time ago. At that time I had no idea that I'd soon discover quite an opposite: money changers with ridiculously low margins, and then some...
In Georgia, money changers are usually every other business on a downtown street. Routinely there are 3 or 4 such places just on one corner. They are about as prolific as vintage video game shops and work agencies in the the UK or perfumeries in Dubai.
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| About 9 out of 10 business sell perfumes. The rest is "Textile trading"... |
Let's get straight in:
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That's like 0.1 tetri (0.04 eurocent!) margin per dollar changed.
And no, there are no exchange fees nor commissions charged. |
How in the name of
Cthulhu can they make money? With such a big number of money changers around surely there's not enough customers to justify the low rates and make money on the trade volume alone. Is it then just a pretense for money laundering? I can't quite believe my own eyes...
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| One more picture just to prove the point... |
Another story to relate: In Zugdidi (the capital of Samegrelo region in western Georgia) at one point there were two money changers next to each other (just around the corner). This table shows their exchange rates for Euro:
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| Change money? Rather, make money. |
So all I had to do was to buy Euros from A, go round the corner (hardly 20m) and sell my hard-earned cash for a quick profit at B. Luckily, the money changers generally do not have enough cash to perpetuate this scam (apart from the fact that I don't like to perpetuate scams in general). The usual
declared trading volume for Euro available on hand was around 200-250 eur in these places, so I'd be able to earn 2.5 tetri per each Euro traded, which adds to about 5 - 6 Lari for the whole sum, which is around 2 - 3 Euros. Per transaction. Per day (if they continued to practise the same ridiculous rate difference each day, which they usually didn't).
