Any website that prints today’s lira rate is publishing tomorrow’s wrong answer — the currency is famously mobile, and your banking app already knows the truth. So this page skips the number and teaches the system: how paying for things actually works between the airport and the ancient marble.
Cards first, cash second
Türkiye is heavily carded: contactless Visa and Mastercard work in supermarkets, restaurants, museums, fuel stations and most shops down to surprisingly small ones. Pay in lira when the terminal offers a currency choice — “dynamic conversion” into your home currency is a politely packaged bad rate, everywhere on earth. Keep cash lira for the honorable holdouts: dolmuş minibuses, market stalls, public toilets (small coins), village cafés, and tips.
Euros, dollars and the rounding game
Many businesses along this coast accept euros or dollars, which is handy in a pinch, though prices in foreign cash are usually rounded — paying in lira is normally the better value. Exchange offices (döviz) in towns beat airport counters comfortably; ATMs are ubiquitous and fine, subject to your bank’s fees — decline the ATM’s own conversion offer too, same principle. The classic mistake of the older guidebooks — arriving with wads of pre-exchanged cash — is now simply unnecessary.
Tipping, calibrated
Restaurants: 5–10% in cash for table service, appreciated rather than enforced. Taxis: round up. Hotel staff: small notes for bags and housekeeping. Hamam attendants: 10–15% of the service. Guides and drivers: at your judgment for a day well made — never demanded, always noticed. Tipping here is a warm custom, not an American-style obligation, and nobody performs arithmetic at the table.
