Money in Albania: do you need cash, do cards work, and how do you open a bank account?

Prices in shops, bills and taxes are in lek. Property, rents on the coast and cars are usually quoted in euro, and landlords and sellers take euro happily; a shop will usually take a euro note too, at its own rate. The Bank of Albania publishes an official rate every working day: 90.74 lek per euro on 23 October 2026, against about 126 in 2020, so a euro buys a third less in Albania than it did six years ago. Exchange at a bank or a licensed bureau (zyrë këmbimi) in town rather than at the airport; bureaus post both buy and sell rates in the window.

Visa and Mastercard work at supermarkets, hotels, fuel stations, pharmacies, the airport and most city restaurants; contactless is normal. Albanians themselves now pay by card more often than they withdraw cash: about 67% of payments through banks in 2025 were by card, 78% of adults have an account (40% in 2018), and the number of card terminals grew 38% in a year to 38,662 by mid-2026, pushed by tourism. Cash is still the default at daily markets, in villages, for taxis, small cafés, building administrators and for most rent payments to private landlords. Keep lek in small notes.

ATMs charge the issuing bank's foreign fee plus, often, a local fee shown on screen before you confirm; withdrawing larger amounts less often is cheaper. If your card is issued in a country under financial sanctions it will not work in Albania either.

Albania joined SEPA: the first SEPA transaction was made on 7 October 2025 and by spring 2026 eleven banks offered SEPA credit transfers, with 363,000 transfers worth EUR 4.3 billion in the first six months. A euro transfer from a German, Italian or Polish account to an Albanian bank is now a normal SEPA payment rather than a SWIFT transfer with correspondent fees, which matters when you pay a deposit or the price of a flat. Wise also pays out to Albanian accounts in lek. For a property purchase the money must still come through a bank and be documented: see the page on paying for property and anti-money-laundering checks.

Accounts are opened in person at a branch. Every bank asks for a passport; most ask for proof of address in Albania (a rental contract or the sale contract) and for the purpose of the account, and a residence permit makes everything easier. Albanian banks publish their fees but not a general rule for non-residents, so write to the branch first and bring the documents the agency or notary gives you for the purchase. A standard debit card at Raiffeisen costs 100 lek a month, nothing inside an account package, with cash limits of 30,000 lek a day.

For taxes, individuals use the 10-character personal number printed on the biometric residence card as their tax number; it is officially issued to citizens and to foreigners with permanent residence. A self-employed person or a company registers at the National Business Centre and gets a NIPT in a day. You need one of these to pay the annual building tax or declare rental income.