Serbian Dinar

MissC79

*I know this has been asked before but it was over 10 years ago and wondered if the advice had changed.

We're travelling to Serbia at the end of the month (Belgrade and Bor) and were wondering what's the best way to get currency/spend as it's a closed currency. There's only 1 retailer here that can get it. 

I have a prepaid Sainsbury's travel card which I can upload with Euro or GBP and use as a debit card.

zagfles

Get some when you arrive. If you're flying to Belgrade the airport has cashpoints. Think ATMs tended to charge a small amount. They probably have exchange desks to change cash too, can't remember, not sure if they're good value but exchanging cash in countries with a minor currency doesn't tend to be expensive in general. 

But get a far better card than the Sainsbury's card, they seem to charge 2% to load with GBP then another 5.75% exchange rate markup if you spend in a different currency!! Unbelievable! Looks like you can't load with Serbian Dinars. And that's on top of any fee the ATM charges!  See The cheapest ways to get travel money - MSE for fee free travel credit/debit cards. 

jbrassy

As the above poster said, get yourself a fee free debit card. Starling and First Direct (and many others) allow you to spend and withdraw cash fee free abroad. Much better than the Sainsbury's prepaid card.

P-Nuts

I went to Belgrade in October, managed to use the airport wifi to buy a bus ticket with the Beograd Plus app (though had a bit of trouble authenticating the transaction for all of 36p), then went into the city centre.

Research had told me that Halkbank cash machines didn’t charge fees, but they weren’t working, tried two and saw other people fail so it wasn’t just my card. So gave up on that and used an NLB Komercijalna cash machine, which charged 600 RSD (£4ish). So as not to pay a second fee I withdrew the maximum of 40k RSD (£290ish). Obviously I used a debit card that didn’t charge any fees of its own.

You absolutely need cash in Serbia but a decent number of places take cards, for example more than in Bosnia. So I paid cash at some places that accepted cards just to use up some of the cash, so as not to have a lot left over but not to run out either. At the places where I paid with a card I used a credit card that doesn’t charge fees.

In the end I still had 4 or 5k RSD left, which I changed back to sterling at the airport. I didn’t get that badly ripped off but not sure exactly how much it would have cost to change a larger amount.

Side note: I attempted to buy an eSIM on the A1 network before travelling but the website malfunctioned, took payment, but didn’t send me the eSIM. I did eventually get a refund after complaining via the website, so they weren’t trying to rip me off. Instead I bought a prepaid SIM on the Yettel network with cash from a street kiosk.

Doshwaster

The best way to get any currency is in the country where they use it. They will have lots of it.