Money in Bali.

Bali uses the Indonesian rupiah (IDR). It's the only legal currency accepted for almost all payments. Hotels or tour operators may sometimes quote prices in US dollars or another foreign currency, but you'll almost always pay in rupiah. Once you arrive, you can withdraw cash from an ATM or exchange your money for IDR.

The rupiah has a lot of zeros, so don't be surprised to pay Rp 100,000 or Rp 500,000 for everyday things. A meal might run Rp 75,000 and a short taxi ride around Rp 150,000.

In most of Bali your card is the easy default. Visa and Mastercard are accepted across hotels, supermarkets, the bigger restaurants and beach clubs, so you really only need cash for the small, local stuff: markets, warungs, tipping, temple donations and street taxis. American Express is rare, so don't make it your only card.

Where you'll hit friction is the surcharge. Some places add 2-3% on card payments, or claim to be "cash only", to push you onto cash they don't pay a processing fee on. That surcharge breaks Bank Indonesia's card rules, but arguing with the cashier rarely gets you anywhere, so just keep enough small cash for those cases and put everything else on the card. Separately, your own bank may add a foreign-transaction fee on every payment abroad, which is exactly what the calculator below helps you dodge with the right card.

Wherever a terminal takes contactless, we'd pay with Apple Pay or Google Pay over the physical card. The bigger hotels, chains and malls support it, and because your phone hands the terminal a one-time token instead of your real card number, it's the best defense against getting your card skimmed. Link it to a Visa or Mastercard and it works anywhere those are accepted.

You don't need to carry much. Cards handle the big stuff, so cash is really for the day's small spending: warungs, drivers, markets, parking and temple donations. A rough guide is Rp 300,000 to Rp 500,000 on you at any time. When you top up, pull a larger amount in one go rather than little and often: most machines charge a flat fee per withdrawal, so fewer, bigger pulls spread that fee thinner.

An ATM is usually the simplest way to get rupiah, but if you've brought cash from home or want to change a larger amount in one go, a money changer can be worth it. Two things decide whether you get a fair deal: where you change, and how you handle it.

Almost every warung, café and shop in Bali now takes QRIS, the single QR code locals pay with through apps like GoPay, OVO and DANA. It's instant and skips cash, but for foreign visitors it's the fiddliest option to set up, and whether you can use it depends on where you're from.

Most visitors never need this. But if you're paying a villa deposit, sending money to family, or moving funds into an Indonesian account as a nomad or long-stay, the rate you're quoted is rarely the rate you get. Most of the cost isn't the visible fee. It's a 3-6% markup buried in the exchange rate itself.

The mid-market rate is the real, mid-point rate you'd see on Google, the benchmark a fair transfer should track. Specialist services like Wise and Instarem get within about 1% of it. A high-street bank wire to an Indonesian account can quietly cost 5-8% once the hidden markup and correspondent-bank fees are counted, on a transfer that often takes days longer.