SoFlyOn

VISA is showing 12.96 for today's rate.

Gaucho100K

The spread of the official vs. blue rate is now reduced to approx. AR$0,80 per US Dollar - depending on the trading day. Probably not worth the hassle unless you are doing the arithmetic to the 5th decimal....

malagajohn

a friend told me he got 14,000 pesos for 1,000 dollars today at his local cueva in Caballito.
Seems to be the average at the moment.

spainflyer

For the past three days La Nación has listed the spread as 13.00 / 13.30. So if your friend got 14, there would seem to be a creeping Blue market. Gaucho 100K, is there a more reliable source than La Nación?

HIDDY

I would say you'd need to be mad to walk about with the amount of cash needed to get a more favourable rate from some stranger up a back alley.
Now restrictions have been lifted the chances of meeting an undesirable may well have increased. They have reasons for doing this anonymously.

malagajohn

Ambito.com will give you quotes for the official and informal market.

malagajohn

Just had a coffee with a friend who has a cueva. He thinks he will make more money with the new blue market , which he says will settke at around 1 peso above the official rate. He says its easier to make more money when the market is stable . He also claims that a lot of his clients who were scared off by the AFIP actions are already back in his cave.

Eastbay1K

Walking almost the entire length of Florida this afternoon, I only heard 6 people saying "cambio." My hearing is fine. A record low. There was probably one more with a tourist site sign that also was a cambio guy on the DL.

Eastbay1K

I made a dinner reservation on Restorando that offered a 20% discount for American Express. This would have been a terrible offer (for foreign AX accountholders) for the past few years. Not no more!

(Well, I actually had a res at the same place with the same deal last year, but someone with a local AX card paid the bill, and we paid him our share in "dolar blue" cash.)

mccomb

Don't these deals only apply to local cards? You cannot get cuotas on a foreign card for example.

Eastbay1K

Válido sobre el total de la cuenta, reservando on-line y abonando con cualquier tarjeta de crédito American Express. No acumulable con otras promociones.
•La propina debe ser calculada antes del descuento.

GUWonder

Any country which both:

(a) has a substantial base of tax evaders; and
(b) has its largest currency note denomination providing a small/poor unit of value and a questionable store of value

is going to have a substantial market for off-the-record currency conversions with an exchange rate that is different than the official exchange rate had by formal, open market purchases. Even when dealing with freely floating currencies.

Tourists usually aren't the target market for such off the record currency conversions, so the drop in tourist-oriented currency touts makes sense.

SoFlyOn

Today I attempted to extract pesos at ATMs from a couple of difference banks in Palermo.

The first, BBVA Banco Frances, seemed to be out of cash. Although even though I had selected the English menu, it defaulted to castellano for error messages - in this case is said (translated), the machine can't dispense the amount requested. I started at $2500 and worked my way down to $1000 but still got the same message.

I crossed the street to Santander Rio, and was able to obtain a maximum of $2000. The menu will stay in English and will tell you if it can't (in my initial request of $2500) dispense that amount, but would you like to request a lower amount. The transaction fee was $84. I get my fees reimbursed, but sometimes the Argentine bank reports the withdrawal with the ATM fee folded in, so I keep my receipts if this turns out to be the case. Today's rate according to VISA was 13.18. I didn't however attempt to do multiple transactions. Historically that was limited to 3 per day when the maximum withdrawal/transaction was $1000/$990.

The initial screen that pops up after you enter your PIN will show a list of peso amounts up to $700, plus an option to select another amount. Use this latter option if you want more then $700. Some machines use a touch sensitive screen while others have buttons on the side of the screen (which sometimes are not perfectly aligned with the on-screen icons ...

I'm using a VISA/Schwab card on the Banelco network (there are 3 networks in Argentina - Banelco, LINK (Mastercard), and Citibank (who have in addition their own special machines at some Citi locations).

M60_to_LGA

In my recent experience with my Schwab card (October), LINK machines are most likely to work, whereas Banelco machines often say they can't work with my card.

I generally have better luck with the government banks (Banco Nación, Banco Provincia, BPN in Neuquén) than I do with the private ones - although Banco Francés usually works for me.

SoFlyOn

Historically I've never had a problem with my Schwab card in Capital Federal - expect when the ATM was out of cash or there was a network problem. I've used my card frequently at Banco Frances, Galicia, and Banco Patagonia.