Traveling the touristy areas of South Africa means that you can pay everywhere by credit card and you don’t need cash (except for tipping and car park guardians) – that’s nice, but you would miss out the beautiful South African banknotes decorated with different animals and having Nelson Mandela on every single one of them. It is in use since 1961 when South Africa changed its status from being a British Dominion to a fully independent republic.
Official ISO code for the Rand is ZAR, but most often it is abbreviated as ‘R‘. The name ‘Rand‘ comes from gold-mining region of Witwatersrand near Pretoria – which feels like a quite strange way to name a currency. The smallest banknote is 10 Rand and there are coins for 5, 2 and 1 Rand. A Rand is divided into 100 Cents but only coins for 50, 20 and 10 Cents are circulating. You can withdraw cash with credit cards easily at the airport but typically also at supermarkets which are the most important ATM locations.
South African Rand
South Africa
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