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Bank: Fransabank
Current Account: LBP currency
Card Type: Access 24 Debit card (can be used online)

Monthly Usage: (copied from the Product Key fact statement from their website)

In Lebanon
• Cash withdrawals:
up to LBP 5,000,000 (from the account linked to the card)
up to USD 2,000 (if card is linked to USD account and if USD banknotes are available in the ATM)
• Purchase transactions:
up to LBP 30,000,000 (from the account linked to the card)
up to USD 10,000 (if card is linked to USD account)
up to USD 100 (if card is linked to LBP account)

International:
• Cash withdrawals:
up to 1,000 USD or C/V (if card linked to a USD account)
• Purchase transactions:
up to 1,000 USD or C/V (if card linked to a USD account)
up to the c/v of 150,000 LBP (if card linked to an LBP account)


So that gives me only about 100$/month to spend online from any International or even local accounts / websites given my account is in LBP.



Bank: Fransabank
Revolving Card / Credit Card: Mastercard Titanium.
Card Currency: USD.

Online Purchases:
Last time i checked, there was no Limits on online spending on this card. for the past 3 months since the beginning of the revolution, amazon was able to charge my intallment payments of 160$ each without any problem.
Cash withdrawal:
Me myself i would never go into any cash withdrawals from a credit card, so i do not know any information about it.

The only problem is that i cannot close any card payments with my LBP account.
They're only taking the minimum monthly payment which is 25$ and accepting it with LBP (automatically removing it from my current account at the official rate).
I need to provide them with USD notes to close the rest of the payments.

I now have around 400$ payments on it, and ready to pay in LBP, they're not accepting it.
And at the rate of 25$ each month, it'll take more than a year to close off the payments while the bank gladly keeps charging me interest, management fee and stamp fees of exchanging every month.
This is what I know as of today, 26/01/2020, I am not planning to update the information in the future, if I did, I'll let you know. The currency of my byblos account is USD

Byblos bank's information is here. Basically you can withdraw $300 per week, you can buy whatever you want online, the limit is pretty high but you can't deposit money online, meaning you cannot use websites like skrill.com or any online wallet.

Blom lets you withdraw either $100 or $150 per week, I don't know the exact number, it keeps changing, and no online transaction is allowed whatsoever, no Aliexpress, no nothing, unless it's fresh money, meaning money you just received, you can't spend what you already have. You can still do local transactions, like buying an Alfa or MTC touch card.

And one last thing, I don't follow the news at all, my mom told me today that USA is planning to close bank of beirut and is sending warnings to whoever uses that bank to withdraw all of his money. Therefore using bank of beirut isn't recommended.

I hear that francabank and bank libano francais or credit libanais have high withdrawal limit, will try to validate that on Tuesday, if that's the case, I'm moving there, if they let me.
BLF: you can withdraw $1000 per week if you already have a USD account if you're trying to open a new account you won't be able to withdraw any USD (perhaps any LBP as well) for 6 months

All my answers in this forum are for USD, I don't know what happens if you open LBP account and I don't care about LBP accounts, and I don't think you do either, we just want to know how much USD we can withdraw in order to make money by converting it to LBP.
Anyone with a Fransabank usd credit card can use it to withdraw cash from ATM or pay in POS in Canada?
khanem wroteAnyone with a Fransabank usd credit card can use it to withdraw cash from ATM or pay in POS in Canada?
Not sure if this helps, i have a credit card from BLC bank (Part of Fransabank group) with a 3000$ limit, i gave it to my sister last month during her trip to Italy and she consumed all the 3k $ within two days through POS and it worked without any issues, however she did not try to withdraw cash.
When I was in the Netherlands I've received this message:
Dear Cardholder, kindly note that your USD Youth Debit Card international spending limit is set at USD1,000 monthly and your cash withdrawal limit is at USD200 weekly. T&C apply. This is subject to change, for regular updates please visit www.bankmed.com.lb or call 1270
I was able to withdraw more than 200$ as I withdrew them once in EUR from an ATM and the second time in USD from the airport's ATM.
Hope that helps
12 days later
I took this through a friend on facebook, asking for how updated the data is and the sources:

5 days later
New official interest rates:

DG wroteNew official interest rates:

https://i.imgur.com/16bvng2.jpg
Not sure why they did this---looks like more to save the banks instead of increase liquidity in the market which is what is really needed.. Another attempt to save a dam by putting band aids on the cracks.
Honestly i just fed up with this random restrictions. Fresh money my ass, daily, weekly limits my ass. If i need to produce batch of PCB and i put money in my account, i dont care what sexual problems does the management of these banks experience today and what they invented new.
Just got russian bank account, card and gazillion associated services, they even gave me SIM card for their virtual operator (yes bank have their own MVNO).
UI/UX of app is really top notch, you see detailed transactions for each move, services you are subscribed now, you have latest possible technologies (NFC, apply pay, google pay, samsung pay, ATM face/voice recognition), they have even custom services for shopping, like aliexpress (special one time code payment), and amount of companies they deal with and have advanced integration is really HUGE. They can assist to open company as well, and do all govt paperwork, you just supply necessary papers ONLINE. Just so you will process payments over them, pay taxes over them and etc and they get their tiny % to live.

After spending several hours trying to explore all features and services they have, i would say, IMO - lebanese banks survival chances are very low.
Lebanese banks just kept only business "we are keeping your money safe", stuck in features in 199x, and miserably failed in single thing they was supposed to do.
If earlier russian banks had terrible service, now they have evolved, opening an account takes 10-20 minutes maximum and it is max pleasant experience. The last time I opened an account with a Lebanese bank, the bureaucracy level reminded me USSR.
Russian banks failing to keep your money in long term (mostly because govt keep devaluing currency and banking system often goes into shock mode due sanctions), but their services level is amazing and that a way they will keep their customers with them.

How the heck Lebanese banks plan to survive with such rudimentary services and excessive bureaucracy?
BUT if they develop same featureset as russian banks, i am quite sure Lebanese banking system can be back on track and become leading again.
There are 2 reasons why lebanese banks were still alive before the 17th October :

1) for us lebanese citizen / resident, it was nearly impossible to bank with a non lebanese bank despite their abysmal level of service. If N26 or any other "online banking app" could have operated in Lebanon, i don't see why any of us who don't have gazillions dollars in the bank would have used a local bank.
IMO the reason online banks are forbidden from operating in leb was so our money could go fund the bankrupt government through local banks, basically it was a mafia : force them to give us their money, and we will lend it back to you (the motto between local banks and the govt)

2) the crazy interest rates, if you had gazillion of dollars, then the rates were practically unparalleled anywhere in the world, hence why most rich Lebanese people invested their money in bonds through the bank.

If you want a really good exemple of the level of expertise of lebanese banks, just ask yourself : "in which country has a Lebanese bank opened and not lost money when in competition against real bankers ?"
Very few, for exemple bank audi lost a lot of money in Turkey and Syria, they only succeed in Egypt
The rest of the banks are mostly corresponding offices (Bank audi France or Bank of Beirut UK).

So yes, in a TL:DR, lebanese bankers are shit, their level of competency is null compared to bankers worldwide, their level of service is non-existent and a monopoly of the lebanese market was installed by the Govt in exchange of which banks would put their money in lebanese bonds.

My 2 cent.
Draguen wroteThere are 2 reasons why lebanese banks were still alive before the 17th October :

1) for us lebanese citizen / resident, it was nearly impossible to bank with a non lebanese bank despite their abysmal level of service. If N26 or any other "online banking app" could have operated in Lebanon, i don't see why any of us who don't have gazillions dollars in the bank would have used a local bank.
IMO the reason online banks are forbidden from operating in leb was so our money could go fund the bankrupt government through local banks, basically it was a mafia : force them to give us their money, and we will lend it back to you (the motto between local banks and the govt)

2) the crazy interest rates, if you had gazillion of dollars, then the rates were practically unparalleled anywhere in the world, hence why most rich Lebanese people invested their money in bonds through the bank.

If you want a really good exemple of the level of expertise of lebanese banks, just ask yourself : "in which country has a Lebanese bank opened and not lost money when in competition against real bankers ?"
Very few, for exemple bank audi lost a lot of money in Turkey and Syria, they only succeed in Egypt
The rest of the banks are mostly corresponding offices (Bank audi France or Bank of Beirut UK).

So yes, in a TL:DR, lebanese bankers are shit, their level of competency is null compared to bankers worldwide, their level of service is non-existent and a monopoly of the lebanese market was installed by the Govt in exchange of which banks would put their money in lebanese bonds.

My 2 cent.
these high fake interest rates are actually the problem .. they are a ponzi scheme
what kind of business can generate 10% return ?! are these banks selling cocaine ?!
Oh I completely agree, only the lebanese didn't see that, many articles mention that 80% of the holders of lebanese bonds are lebanese themselves. It says a lot about how many non lebanese had confidence in our system.
Gonna repost this question here since this thread is more relevant than the bitcoin one. Also, this would help anyone else in a similar situation

So i have some money stuck in an account in Lebanon and I want to get as much out as I can, in addition to the bi-weekly cash withdraws that I have entrusted a family member to do.
I have a USD credit card and the limits are as follows: Max 200$ a day and 500$ a month.
I was hoping to buy gold with it, but due to the small limit I'd be taking a major hit on a gram-to-gram basis if I'm only buying 2-3 grams, in comparison to a full ounce.
I need a method to "save" my credit card $ into some sort of account or crypto which I can use later on to buy an ounce of gold.
I'm in Canada, so local dealers are not an option for me, everything has to be done online.
I've tried buying crypto on coinbase with my Lebanese CC, but that didn't work.
Anyone has any suggestions? (I'm also open to paypal or anything else that would help me turn my CC balance to real $ in my canadian bank account)
random-username wroteGonna repost this question here since this thread is more relevant than the bitcoin one. Also, this would help anyone else in a similar situation

So i have some money stuck in an account in Lebanon and I want to get as much out as I can, in addition to the bi-weekly cash withdraws that I have entrusted a family member to do.
I have a USD credit card and the limits are as follows: Max 200$ a day and 500$ a month.
I was hoping to buy gold with it, but due to the small limit I'd be taking a major hit on a gram-to-gram basis if I'm only buying 2-3 grams, in comparison to a full ounce.
I need a method to "save" my credit card $ into some sort of account or crypto which I can use later on to buy an ounce of gold.
I'm in Canada, so local dealers are not an option for me, everything has to be done online.
I've tried buying crypto on coinbase with my Lebanese CC, but that didn't work.
Anyone has any suggestions? (I'm also open to paypal or anything else that would help me turn my CC balance to real $ in my canadian bank account)
i don't want to sound pessimistic, but based on what i am noticing, whatever method you find that would work today, it may not work after 2 or 3 days.
banks are doing whatever they can -illegally sometimes, but that's another discussion- to stop you from withdrawing or transferring real USD, you want to invest in crypto and/or gold which is near impossible using CC or checks, maybe your best bet if you can find someone that's willing to sell you anything valuable(real estate, car...) for check bancaire or wire transfer..
Is there a trustful broker that get a banker's cheque( cheque bancaire) in USD + his commission and give in return fresh USD minus his agreed commission rate from the amount , cheque amount 13,000 USD.

Thank You
random-username wroteGonna repost this question here since this thread is more relevant than the bitcoin one. Also, this would help anyone else in a similar situation

So i have some money stuck in an account in Lebanon and I want to get as much out as I can, in addition to the bi-weekly cash withdraws that I have entrusted a family member to do.
I have a USD credit card and the limits are as follows: Max 200$ a day and 500$ a month.
I was hoping to buy gold with it, but due to the small limit I'd be taking a major hit on a gram-to-gram basis if I'm only buying 2-3 grams, in comparison to a full ounce.
I need a method to "save" my credit card $ into some sort of account or crypto which I can use later on to buy an ounce of gold.
I'm in Canada, so local dealers are not an option for me, everything has to be done online.
I've tried buying crypto on coinbase with my Lebanese CC, but that didn't work.
Anyone has any suggestions? (I'm also open to paypal or anything else that would help me turn my CC balance to real $ in my canadian bank account)
Big update, but this only works if you have a bank account abroad (i have one in Canada).
I managed to transform my lollar $ on my lebanese credit card to real $ in my canadian checking account using bitcoin. What I did was as follows:

Check Paxful for lowest offers on giftcards ==> Buy said giftcards with lebanese credit card ==> Exchange giftcards for bitcoin ==> Transfer bitcoin to shakepay app (free open source app for canadians to manage their bitcoin wallets) ==>Sell bitcoin immediately and have it auto-deposited into my checking account on the spot.

Ideally you should have a bank abroad, or you just end stuck holding bitcoin. Best of luck everyone!
random-username wrote
Check Paxful for lowest offers on giftcards ==> Buy said giftcards with lebanese credit card ==> Exchange giftcards for bitcoin ==> Transfer bitcoin to shakepay app (free open source app for canadians to manage their bitcoin wallets) ==>Sell bitcoin immediately and have it auto-deposited into my checking account on the spot.

Ideally you should have a bank abroad, or you just end stuck holding bitcoin. Best of luck everyone!
how much percentage you loose in the process? 20-30%?
Dan28 wrote
random-username wrote
Check Paxful for lowest offers on giftcards ==> Buy said giftcards with lebanese credit card ==> Exchange giftcards for bitcoin ==> Transfer bitcoin to shakepay app (free open source app for canadians to manage their bitcoin wallets) ==>Sell bitcoin immediately and have it auto-deposited into my checking account on the spot.

Ideally you should have a bank abroad, or you just end stuck holding bitcoin. Best of luck everyone!
how much percentage you loose in the process? 20-30%?
8.92% on the gift card and less than 0.2% on fees for transferring the bitcoins between accounts and finally to my checking account.
It all depends on the gift card, some charge a 40% markup, while others are low. Check out the paxful.com listings, they change everyday.
Also, I could speculate and hold those bitcoins in my wallet till they appreciate enough to cover the roughly 9% loss in value, but I don't know much about bitcoin to do that and I've very risk averse after the whole experience in lebanon.

Hopefully this helps you guys to get some of your money out for a reasonable rate. Maybe you have some relatives abroad that can liquidate the bitcoins for you.