Egypt is a cash country with a modern surface. A five star hotel in Cairo will take your card without a flicker, and the same hotel will have a driver outside who wants notes. Almost every friction a visitor meets with money comes from that gap, and it is easy to plan around.
The pound, and what it has been through
The Egyptian pound divides into 100 piastres, though piastre coins have largely disappeared from daily use and prices are quoted in pounds. The largest note is 200 pounds, which is only a few dollars, and that is why a wallet in Egypt feels thick and why prices come in large numbers that mean small amounts.
The pound has been devalued more than once in recent years, and the exchange rate has moved sharply as a result. That history matters to a visitor in one specific way: do not plan a budget in pounds months in advance and expect it to hold. Convert as you spend.
It also means prices written in an older guidebook can be badly out. Treat any number older than a year as a rough shape rather than a figure.
What things cost
Egypt is inexpensive for a visitor, and the everyday items are very inexpensive.
A cup of tea or coffee, a bottle of water, a street snack: a few pounds each. A meal in a local restaurant: a small number of pounds. A meal in a hotel restaurant: several times that, for similar food. A taxi across Cairo: cheap by European standards, and negotiable. Entry to the major sites: the largest single line in most people’s daily spending, and priced for visitors rather than residents.
Two pricing habits are worth knowing. The first is that tourist sites, hotels and Nile cruises often quote in US dollars, which protects them from the currency moving and costs you a little. The second is that the price quoted to a visitor in a market is a starting point, and the negotiation is expected.
Converting in your head
The widget below uses a reference rate for one day. Your bank will give you something slightly worse.
Because the numbers are large, the useful anchor is not one pound but a hundred. Learn what a hundred pounds feels like, whether that is a coffee or a meal, and the arithmetic collapses into something you can do while standing at a stall.
Cash, cards and ATMs
Cards work in hotels, larger restaurants, supermarkets and the bigger shops. They do not work for a taxi, a market stall, a tip, a toilet attendant or a small cafe, and those are most of the transactions in a day.
So the working arrangement is simple: keep cash on you, in small notes, and use a card for the larger bills. Withdraw from an ATM attached to a bank, decline the machine’s offer to convert the amount into your own currency, and take a reasonable amount at once rather than several small withdrawals, since the fee is charged per withdrawal.
Baksheesh, and why it is not a nuisance
Tipping in Egypt is called baksheesh, and it is closer to a small fee for a service than to a reward for good service. Someone opens a door, watches your car, carries a bag, points you towards the right platform: a few pounds changes hands, and it is expected rather than appreciated.
Treat it as a budget line rather than an imposition. Keep a pocket of small notes and coins, decide before you go what you are comfortable giving for each kind of service, and the whole thing stops being a source of friction. Ten percent in a restaurant is the usual figure, and something for a guide or driver at the end of the day.
A note on paying by card in Egypt
Card terminals in Egypt sometimes ask a question in Arabic that decides where the conversion happens, and the answer matters more than the wording suggests.
If the machine offers to charge you in your own currency, decline it. That service, called dynamic currency conversion, uses a rate set by the terminal rather than by your bank, and the margin sits somewhere between a little and a lot. Choosing to be charged in Egyptian pounds leaves the conversion to your own bank, which is almost always the better of the two.
One more habit helps in smaller shops. A card machine needs a phone line or a data connection to work, and in a small shop with a weak signal a transaction can fail or hang. If the shop is busy and the terminal is struggling, paying in cash is faster for everyone and costs you nothing.
Two money problems worth avoiding
The first is arriving with no local currency at all. Egyptian airports have ATMs and exchange desks, and both work, but a queue at arrivals after a long flight is a poor place to discover that a card has been frozen for security reasons. A small amount of foreign cash in a pocket solves the first hour.
The second is assuming a written price is the price. For hotels, museums and anything with a printed tariff, it is. For a taxi, a guide or a market stall, it is an opening, and agreeing the number before the service starts is the whole of the negotiation. Doing it before is polite. Doing it after is an argument.
Before you fly
One last thing about arriving. The airport will have ATMs and exchange desks, and both are fine, but a taxi driver before you have found an ATM is the moment you want to have planned for. A small amount of foreign cash in your pocket solves the first hour better than any amount of research.
If you are sorting out the phone before the trip, an eSIM for Egypt covers the data side, and what a SIM card costs there compares what you can do on arrival.