Before you visit Kraków

Cash is not dead here — Poles love both

The one thing to actually prepare for.

Let's be honest first: Poland is one of the most card-friendly countries in Europe. Contactless works in nearly every shop, café and restaurant, and locals pay for a single bus ticket with their phones. You could almost survive on card alone.

Almost. Because the moment you leave the card-friendly bubble, cash is the only thing that works — and that moment always comes when you least expect it:

• Food and souvenir markets, street stalls with obwarzanki (the famous ring-shaped bread) and some milk bars
• Some smaller bars and pubs, especially in the Kazimierz district — a few are proudly cash-only
• Public toilets, cloakrooms, luggage storage — small coins territory
• Some taxis (ask before the ride) and tips for guides, drivers and hotel staff
• Church donation boxes, flea markets, mountain huts if you day-trip to the Tatras

Cash also buys better prices — and not just on small things

Here's the argument most guides miss entirely. For anything valuable and local — Bolesławiec pottery, Baltic amber, jewellery made in Kraków, fur, watches, art and paintings, or paying for a tour — asking about the cash price will usually get you a noticeably better offer than paying by card. Local businesses, local crafts, local services: everything you actually came to Kraków to experience tends to be cheaper for cash. On pricier items the difference can reach up to 20% in extreme cases — on a serious purchase, that's the price of a hotel night.

The comfortable setup: 100–200 PLN in cash per day, mostly in 10s, 20s and 50s. Vendors dislike big notes — a 200 PLN note for a 6 PLN obwarzanek will earn you a sigh you'll understand in any language.

The ATM traps

Where most tourists lose money without ever noticing.

Trap 1: the "guaranteed rate" screen

At some point the ATM will offer to charge you in your home currency at a "guaranteed exchange rate", often suggesting it's the safe choice and that the market rate is a risky gamble. It's the opposite. That guaranteed rate is set by the ATM operator and is consistently worse — the current market rate applied by your own bank is practically always more favourable. Always choose PLN / złoty / "without conversion" and let your bank do the converting.

Trap 2: stand-alone ATMs in the city centre

The brightly-lit machines standing alone on tourist streets (Euronet is the biggest network) charge their own operator fees on top of your bank's fees, push the "guaranteed rate" hard, and open with absurdly high suggested withdrawal amounts — choose "other amount" and type your own. Use ATMs physically attached to a bank branch instead: PKO BP, Pekao, Santander, ING, mBank. Same money, dramatically smaller haircut.

Trap 3: leaving the physical card at home

Paying in shops with Apple Pay or Google Pay works beautifully in Poland. Withdrawing cash with just your phone usually doesn't — cardless ATM withdrawals here are built around BLIK, a system for Polish bank customers, and support for foreign phone wallets is hit-and-miss. Bring the physical card. Without it you may find yourself unable to get cash at all.

Never exchange at the airport

The most expensive 30 seconds of your trip.

Airport exchange counters (and hotel desks) survive on one thing: you just landed, you have no złoty, and you haven't seen any other rate yet. Their rates can deviate from the market rate by as much as 50% — usually under a big "NO COMMISSION" sign. And that sign is technically true: no commission is charged. It's the rate itself that robs you.

If you truly need cash at the airport, withdraw a small amount — 50–100 PLN — from the bank-operated ATM in the terminal (at Kraków Airport there is a Pekao branch), in PLN, and exchange the rest in the city, at an office that passes the check from section 05. Better yet: your card works on the train and bus into town, so you may not need any cash until you're in the centre.

One important nuance: the up-to-50% boards are not an airport specialty. Exactly the same rates operate in ordinary-looking exchange offices on the busiest tourist streets of the city centre — often a few doors away from perfectly honest ones. So the rule is not "avoid the centre". Geography tells you nothing about a kantor; the board tells you everything. Run the 20-second check from section 05 on any office, anywhere, and let the rates speak for themselves.

Card fees and paying in euros

Two quiet ways the printed price stops being the real price.

Card surcharges. Poland's currency is the złoty and prices are quoted in złoty — but a few tourist-oriented restaurants and shops quietly add an extra fee for card payments, sometimes up to 10%, or dress it up as a "service charge". Check the menu and the bill before paying. If a surcharge appears out of nowhere, you're entitled to question it — and paying the exact printed price in cash is always an option.

Paying in euros. Some sellers will accept euros — it sounds convenient, but the rate they apply is theirs, not the market's, and it's rarely generous. You're effectively doing a currency exchange at the till, at the worst desk in town. If you're staying more than a few hours, exchanging your euros for złoty once, at a fair rate, beats paying a hidden margin at every purchase.

Card terminals play the same trick as ATMs. When you pay in a shop or restaurant, the terminal may also ask whether to charge your card in złoty or in your home currency at a "guaranteed rate". It's the exact same trap as at the cash machine: the terminal's rate is worse than the one your bank will give you. Same answer, every time: PLN.

How to spot an honest exchange office

A 20-second check that works on any kantor — including ours.

Kraków's tourist streets are famous for exchange offices with beautiful rates in the window that somehow never apply to you. The tricks are old: showing only the rate at which they sell currency (not the one at which they buy yours), or displaying rates for exotic currencies next to big $, €, £ symbols. Here's the checklist — hold every kantor to it:

• Both rates on display: WE BUY and WE SELL, visible from the street. For over a year Polish regulations have required exchange offices to display both rates — an office still showing only one column is openly ignoring the rules, which tells you everything about it.
• Currency codes, not symbols: the international codes — EUR, USD, GBP — are the standard. Boards built on $, €, £ symbols alone are the classic scam: the attractive number next to the symbol often belongs to an exotic dollar or pound, not the one in your wallet. And beware — these offices happily display both buy and sell rates, so no single green flag clears a kantor on its own.
• Sanity-check against the market: google "EUR to PLN". An honest kantor sits within a few groszy of the mid-market rate. A rate that's 10% off is not a rate, it's a trap.
• 0% commission means 0%: the rate on the board is the rate on your receipt — ask for the exact amount you'll receive before handing anything over.
• You always get a receipt. Every legal exchange in Poland must issue one. No receipt = report it.

This checklist is exactly how we operate at Kantor Black Sheep, Floriańska 37 — both rates in the window, currency codes, 0% commission. We aim to offer the best buy and sell rates in the centre of Kraków for the main currencies: EUR, USD and GBP. Don't take our word for it: run the check on us, then read our Google reviews.

Got misled at another exchange? We wrote a step-by-step guide on what to do and where to report it — see "Scammed by an exchange office?" below.

Scams that come to you

Honest exchange never starts on the street.

The tout with the exchange sign

Someone strolling the tourist streets with a $, €, £ EXCHANGE sign — often a friendly girl with an umbrella — inviting you to a nearby office. The trick: the attractive numbers on that office's outdoor board belong to exotic currencies, not to your euros or dollars. Remember: an honest kantor never needs to fish for customers on the street. Its rate board does that job on its own.

The quick exchange in a gateway

A man "from the exchange office" offers to skip the queue and swap your money on the spot — in a gateway, conveniently out of sight of any cameras. What lands in your hand: banknotes withdrawn from circulation, or a currency that isn't money in Poland at all — Ukrainian hryvnias are a favourite, worth a fraction of the złoty they imitate. By the time you try to pay with them, he's long gone. Currency changes hands behind a counter, on camera, with a receipt — never in a gateway.

Why this works every time: Google shows the mid-market rate — the wholesale rate at which international banks trade currency in huge bundles. No exchange office on Earth beats it. An honest kantor sits just under it, and that small difference is its entire earnings. So an offer better than Google isn't a bargain — it's the one rate that cannot honestly exist.

Tipping and small-cash etiquette

Small stuff that makes you look like a pro.

• Around 10% in restaurants for good service — appreciated, not obligatory. Rounding up is fine for taxis and bars.
• Tip in cash even when paying by card — many terminals have no tip screen, and cash is the only way to be sure it reaches your server.
• The famous trap: saying "dziękuję" (thank you) while handing over the money means "keep the change". Say it after you get your change back.
• Break big notes early: supermarkets and chain stores (Żabka, Biedronka) accept them without drama, and small vendors will thank you for exact-ish change.