Yes, you can use euros in Gibraltar. They’re accepted everywhere, but there are a couple of catches with cash and card that are worth knowing about before you pay for anything.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Paying cash, the shop decides the rate of conversion, so you’d better hope they’re being fair.
- Paying card, choose to be charged in pounds, or you’ll lose some of your hard earned money to conversion fees.
Anything official is priced and quoted in pounds. We were quoted and paid in pounds at the car park, at the taxi rank for a run up the Rock, and on the bus, and it never once came up as a question.
It was in the high street that euros started turning up, in the restaurants and the shops along Main Street and around Casemates Square.
What it actually takes to get up the Rock is over in getting around Gibraltar. What two days here cost us, itemised from what we handed over, is in is Gibraltar expensive.
Does It Matter Which One You Pay In?
The first time I handed over euros in a shop I had no idea what rate I’d just accepted, and there was nothing on the wall to tell me, which is how cash works here. The shop decides what your euros are worth, there’s no posted rate and nothing to argue with, just whatever number the till has been set to.
Card is sneakier. The machine offers to charge you in euros as though it’s doing you a favour, and if you accept, the terminal handles the conversion instead of your bank. It’s called dynamic currency conversion, and I’ve never once seen it land in the customer’s favour.
Choose GBP every time. Your own bank will convert it far better than a card reader in a souvenir shop, and pressing the right button takes about a second.
What Currency Is Used in Gibraltar?
The local money is the Gibraltar pound, currency code GIP, and it’s pegged one to one with sterling. How much is 100 Gibraltar pounds? £100.
That’s it.
No spread, no sums, and I loved that after a few days of doing euro maths in your head.
Can I use English pounds in Gibraltar? Yes, everywhere, at face value, no fuss whatsoever.
It doesn’t run the other way, though, and this is the one real trap in an otherwise lovely simple system. Gibraltar notes aren’t accepted in the UK, and the moment you walk back across into Spain they’re worth precisely nothing.
As for everything else, the official tourist board says most retailers take euros and dollars. I’d trust that on euros because I watched it happen all day. On dollars I’m less sure, plenty of people online will tell you flatly that they don’t, and I never tried it myself, so if you’re carrying dollars I’d change them rather than find out at a till.
What to Carry
A card, and genuinely that’s it. I didn’t change money once in two days and never felt the lack of it, which made the whole trip a lot simpler than I’d expected.
There are ATMs around town too, so you don’t need to arrive with cash in your pocket. Turn up with a card and sort the rest out if and when you want to.
If you’d rather have notes, bring sterling rather than euros. And if you do change money here, the bureaux de change don’t charge commission on banknotes, which is a good deal better than you’ll find in most places.
One last thing. Spend or change any Gibraltar notes before you leave, because the handful you carry back over the border buys you absolutely nothing on either side of it.
If you want the things worth spending it on, they’re in the best things to do in Gibraltar.
And if you’re still working out how the border and the money fit together, the short answers are all on facts about Gibraltar.
