I spent six weeks in Madagascar. Cash is still king here. During my stay, not one hotel accepted payment by card. And the only time I tried to pay with the card at a Super U supermarket, their system was down. It’s cash only, even for the Lemurs Park.
I advise travellers to take a couple of bank cards, both Visa and Mastercard. Not all ATMs accept both cards. The MCB, BNI and Accès Banque accept both. The Bank of Africa accepts only VISA. The BMOI bank says it takes VISA, but at two separate branches, my transaction was declined.
Of course, it is a good idea, especially when travelling off the beaten track, as I did, travelling down the remote east coast from Tamatave to Manakara, with two days on a cargo boat on the Canal des Pangalanes, to carry hard cash, just in case and have some Euros, as back up. I never had a problem changing them.
There are ATMs, but This Is Africa. They sometimes run out, the power goes down and the withdrawal limits can be low.
The Free ATMs in Madagascar are:
MCB Madagascar
BNI Madagascar
Accès Banque
1. MCB (Mauritius Commercial Bank) Madagascar:
I am glad to report that I successfully used a UK-issued ‘WISE’ VISA debit card at the MCB ATM at the Ivato International Airport and incurred no withdrawal fees. I also used the MCB ATM in Tamatave and Antsirabe.
Using the free Wi-Fi at the airport, I switched on the GPS and opened my banking app to minimise the risk of a security breach.
Unsure if there was a limit on how much I could withdraw, I tapped in 400,000, selected ‘credit card’ and was happy to hear the magical sound of money being counted.
I had a wad of 10,000 notes and bizarrely, one 20,000 note. This is what 400,000 Ariary looks like (£70s worth) with a few other notes collected the next day:
2. BNI (Banque Nationale d’Investissement) Madagascar:
Normally, when I have found an ATM that offers free withdrawals, I don’t bother to go around searching for another one, but for the purpose of this blog, I wanted to find another ATM that also had no withdrawal fees. But also I wanted to know of another bank for the sake of having a Plan B, and am happy to report that I successfully used the BNI Madagascar ATM in Antananarivo with a UK-issued ”WISE’ VISA debit card and incurred no withdrawal fees.
The BNI bank has way more branches in Madagascar than the MCB bank, but the BNI ATM withdrawal limit is very often only 200,000 Ar, which is not even 50 USD.
3. Accès Banque:
I also successfully used the Accès Banque in Antananarivo with a UK-issued ‘WISE’ VISA debit card and incurred no withdrawal fees. Security is strict here regarding photos at the bank, hence no chance to get a photo of the Accès Banque ATM.
Later in the travels, I found there are only a limited number of towns with Accès Banque ATMs.
