Most of us who visit the casino do so closer to home, or close enough that there isn’t border crossings and currency considerations. But with Brian Christopher sailing on Australian cruises and visiting Canada periodically, we’ve been getting questions about currency accordingly:
When you gamble in Canada, do you have to use their currency? Or how does that work?
Kim H.
When you travel to different countries, they’ll have their own currencies to use, and the casino is no exception. The slots will take the currency of the country you’re in, so you should either prepare by doing a currency conversion, or you could potentially pull money out while there, with the caveat that depending on your bank and the account you have with them, you might be charged a currency conversion fee for the convenience.
Interestingly, this does apply to casino cruise ships in some cases too. When Brian Christopher sailed out of Sydney with Carnival, he was excited to learn that Australian dollars were accepted on board.
As of this writing, the currency conversion from U.S. dollars to both Canadian and Australian dollars is positive – you get more than one foreign dollar for each U.S. dollar you convert. So if you bet $1 in Canadian or Australian dollars, it actually costs you less than $1 U.S. currency. As long as you’re not adjusting your bets to account for this, your money should last longer, because you’ve effectively lowered your bet.
Some of this may get simpler in the future with cashless gaming, since you won’t need to have physical currency on hand at all. Currency conversion, even electronically, will often carry fees, but it’ll avoid you accidentally going home with foreign money and no easy way to part with it.
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