Originally Posted by GUWonder

HYD city ATMs were mostly just fine for some foreign card use, but you'll possibly get milked for bank withdrawal fees as a percentage of the (relatively low in USD terms) withdrawal amount.




The idiotic moves have been sourced from non-bureaucrats; and any such future moves related to this are expected to come from the same non-bureaucrats and/or as a response to non-bureaucrats. And yet the situation is, amusingly enough, improving because: the career bureaucrats have been trying to fix things for the elected one man who decided to do this demonetization thing like it has gone over; and Indians are being Indians in gaming the game faster than the bureaucracies can do what they can to serve their master and the master's objectives for demonetization.

Encouraging the use of even small denomination foreign cash for private domestic settlement/conversion in India runs counter to some of the claimed objectives for the demonetization.

If foreign cash is what you want to bring and use in India via non-formal forex channels, then it's USD, EUR and GBP that seem to be most appreciated. And smaller denominations are more likely to work out better than bigger denominations unless you want to end up with overpaying more and having a bunch more high denomination Indian notes that could be subject to govevernmental whim yet again.