Myanmar’s exclusion from international banking system is a major handicap for travellers to the country which translates into the obligation of carrying large sums of cash…
YANGON- In a Yangon restaurant, next to Scotts Market, a popular tourist attraction, the waiter looks with suspicion at a 20-dollar note tendered by a tourist. The verdict finally comes: “Sorry sir, your note is folded on the side. I can’t accept it!” This scene is repeated daily in the shops of Yangon and other tourist centres. Excluded for decades from the international banking system, tourists to Myanmar will find hard to use their international credit or debit cards. And worst of it, the US dollar – de facto the unofficial currency of the country- is only accepted if its notes are crispy-new. “We can accept in some ways credit cards but this is a complicated and costly procedure as we have to get an account and name registered abroad to which we will send customers’ transactions,” explains confidently an hotelier of a fancy luxury hotel in Yangon.
Since Myanmar is on the path of democratization, economic sanctions start to ease. And it has to have also an effect on money circulation and exchange. Last spring, the government and the Central Bank finally gave their blessing to authorized dealers to get a license to handle foreign currency. Since then, 17 private banks on April 1 have started operations while many official money changer counters are now available in tourist areas in Myanmar’s main cities as well as at airport, hotels and shopping centres.
The most acute difficulty resides into the limited acceptance of credit cards around the country. Some ATMs machines can now be seen in the streets of Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Daw with a new system of universal debit cards to get into service by the end of June or early July. Unfortunately, ATM will only be available for domestic operations. But according to an interview given to the newspaper Myanmar Times by Daw Than Than Swe from the Myanmar Payment Union Committee, by early next year, the Central Bank will be ready to build up an international link system with swift for users of foreign credit cards. It will then certainly help promoting Myanmar as a normalized tourist destination…
Luc Citrinot a French national is a freelance journalist and consultant in tourism and air transport with over 20 years experience. Based in Paris and Bangkok, he works for various travel and air transport trade publications in Europe and Asia.
