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TheIlluminative wroteI am in Istanbul currently and I tried several exchanges offices in Istiklal, taksim, and the best one offers $1 = 1,400 LBP. And the funny thing is that he has 500,000 LBP maximum ;)

Edit: Global exchange in Turkey changed their pricing. $1 is almost 1,500 LBP now. It was 2,700 LBP before as stated somewhere in the thread few days ago!
Can you exchange LBP for USD or are they only selling their LBP stock?
Pretty difficult. Nobody is interested in buying LBP abroad. Doesn't make sense for them. Even if you find, the rates will be much worse than in Lebanon.
TheIlluminative wrotePretty difficult. Nobody is interested in buying LBP abroad. Doesn't make sense for them. Even if you find, the rates will be much worse than in Lebanon.
How about doing this the other way, how much will they sell it to you? Trying to make a little profile coming back to Lebanon.
Lebanon printing 9 tons of 50,000 LBP and 100,000 LBP slips is very alerting , equivelance to 13 Trillion LBP . To put it short BDL cannot issue TB, at least in the short run, and let the commercial banks buy ( with interest) and give LBP to government in order to close its public sector expenditures ( including army , employees etc...). Point here , printing slips witout BDL Coverage in foreign currencies , expect further devaluation of the currency - Syrian and Iran trend. Inflation will increase with fixed salaries / and decreased in many private sectors firms / banks. Lot of LBP have been pulled from the commercial banks by citizens saving them at home & by corrupted politics pulling ~ 6 billion USD from local commercial banks to the outside. The real capabilities of the commercial banks are now under stress , in avoidance of further deterioration more stringent capital controls will be imposed. Further to that , government will be in a more and more stress on how it will pay its wages and spend without the coverage of commercial banks no purchasing TB due to their financial distress
Tech Guru wroteLebanon printing 9 tons of 50,000 LBP and 100,000 LBP slips is very alerting , equivelance to 13 Trillion LBP . To put it short BDL cannot issue TB, at least in the short run, and let the commercial banks buy ( with interest) and give LBP to government in order to close its public sector expenditures ( including army , employees etc...).
It is concerning. It is my understanding that printing money to cover deficit would cause inflation.
Can you share the source please?
Not necessarily inflation, but the country wasn't technically ready to shift its whole economy towards LBP under a month, causing shortages in the LBP bills.
I think everything will be clear in the next two weeks.
Do you think buying Bitcoins is a good bet or it's on the decline?
BTW can you just buy online using an app?
infiniteloop wroteDo you think buying Bitcoins is a good bet or it's on the decline?
BTW can you just buy online using an app?
It's cheaper to buy from a local dealer.
It's always a good bet to purchase bitcoin for the long run, but keep in mind you should not touch your crypto for a while (even when you feel it's a decline)
You can sell them for cash outside Lebanon?
Fransabank has stopped all exchanges from lbp to usd, I want to cover my usd credit card payments with my lbp account, they're not letting me.

Anyone has any positive experience currently with another bank regarding covering usd credit card payments with lbp account?

Im thinking of closing my account with them.
All banks currently will not accept paying your dept in LL if you have a USD account.
AVOlio wroteFransabank has stopped all exchanges from lbp to usd, I want to cover my usd credit card payments with my lbp account, they're not letting me.

Anyone has any positive experience currently with another bank regarding covering usd credit card payments with lbp account?

Im thinking of closing my account with them.
Same thing has been implemented 2 days ago at Bank Beirut. You can only cover 5% of your USD credit card payments with your LBP account.
Yea that 5% or 25$ minimum that the system automatically takes from your lbp account on the end of the billing cycle.

Other than that, they're not letting me cover any payments.
Few weeks ago i paid my Bank Audi USD credit card fully with LBP.
Does this mean from now on i won't be able to do that?
is the 5% per month? so i can keep paying 5% until i pay the full amount?
Won't i be penalized for not paying the credit card for the rest of the amount each month?

Or is it, 5% LBP and the 95% should be in USD.
any workarounds in this case?
AVOlio wroteYea that 5% or 25$ minimum that the system automatically takes from your lbp account on the end of the billing cycle.

Other than that, they're not letting me cover any payments.
I have a USD account and a USD credit card with Fransabank. I usually pay my credit card using the app, but since I was at the bank, I asked the teller to transfer the amount owing from the USD account to the credit card. The teller told me that is not possible; only the 5% automatic payment was allowed.

I found this absurd since I have the money in my account and they cannot not let me pay the credit card statement and then start charging me interest for it.

I met with the branch manager and she had me do the transfer via the app and it worked. The only limitation is that only $999 can be transferred per day. Since the amount was higher than $1,000. I transferred $999 on day 1 and the rest on day 2. No issues.

TLDR: For US accounts and credit cards, you can transfer $999 per day using the app.
@sero
Yea, the system will automatically withdraw 5% (or in my case minimum amount of 25$) out of my current account to cover my payments.
The remaining will stay there and I cannot pay them with lbp.
You won't be penalized, you'd just keep paying interest on the remaining amount until that 5% (25$) closes the entire amount eventually.

@Xsever
Yes, they told me that I can pay them from a USD account or if I have USD cash, but to pay USD cc payment with LBP impossible!
("even if I speak with God to make it happen, it won't" quote from the person that I usually deal with in fransabank).
Using the app, I tried transferring from lbp account to the card, it's not working, error message is you have exceeded the transfer limit per day, I guess this is how they are blocking us from making transfer by setting the transfer limit to 0.

Tried transferring it from a usd account (that has 0$) to the credit card, I assume this would have worked if I had funds in the account because the error message said insufficient funds.

So usd to usd works online and in person.
LBP to usd works neither online nor in person.

This is simply a freaking move to gain interest from tens of thousands of customers.

I talked with the financial department at work today, I told them that I want to close my account with fransabank and I don't want to deal with them anymore ( they're the ones who gave us the choice between 2 banks to domicilate our salaries, fransabank and BOB, but I have a feeling Bob is far worse) and that I want to take my salary cash from now on.

So I guess we should really cut our online purchases in US dollars from now if we really do not have any US currency to cover them.
AVOlio wrote@sero
@Xsever
Using the app, I tried transferring from lbp account to the card, it's not working, error message is you have exceeded the transfer limit per day, I guess this is how they are blocking us from making transfer by setting the transfer limit to 0.
I was getting the same error when I was putting an amount greater than $1,000. Use a smaller amount; like 100,000 LBP and let's see if it works. Apparently, the daily transfer limit was $1,000.
Can you buy using LL debit card on amazon and aliexpress?
I only have esurf which is linked to my USD account, my BOB LL debit card is not working online at all even with Cyberia and Alfa recharge but they have a dedicated internet card like esurf at BOB
Also as long as officially the $ is at 1510LL our salaries won't see any increase but once it goes official that it's like 1800LL I think they will be obliged to raise the salaries in LL to match the job contract if it was made based on $
Xsever wrote
AVOlio wrote@sero
@Xsever
Using the app, I tried transferring from lbp account to the card, it's not working, error message is you have exceeded the transfer limit per day, I guess this is how they are blocking us from making transfer by setting the transfer limit to 0.
I was getting the same error when I was putting an amount greater than $1,000. Use a smaller amount; like 100,000 LBP and let's see if it works. Apparently, the daily transfer limit was $1,000.
Im getting the same message even if I transfer 1,000 LBP.
This is their way of blocking exchange transfers.
infiniteloop wroteCan you buy using LL debit card on amazon and aliexpress?
I only have esurf which is linked to my USD account, my BOB LL debit card is not working online at all even with Cyberia and Alfa recharge but they have a dedicated internet card like esurf at BOB
Also as long as officially the $ is at 1510LL our salaries won't see any increase but once it goes official that it's like 1800LL I think they will be obliged to raise the salaries in LL to match the job contract if it was made based on $
No, a debit card doesn't work online. I have BoB debit and credit card. They switched the debit card to LBP and the credit card is still in USD.

I'm glad they didn't lower the limit which is a good sign unlike BLOM.

FYI BLOM started the minimum payment in LBP a month ago. LBP cards WILL NOT work abroad.

They also blocked all forex transactions online ( all banks )