The dollar in Erbil: how Kurdistan’s boards quote, where the market sits, and why the toman is on every one of them
Erbil’s exchange offices print two-sided boards, quote every currency against the dollar, and list the Iranian toman beside the euro. A guide to reading them, with the three boards DinarView reads every ten minutes.
Walk down Ronaki in Erbil at ten in the morning and the boards are already changing. Erbil’s exchange market is the most transparent in Iraq: dozens of licensed offices in a few blocks, most with a printed or electronic board on the street, several with the board on a website, and one or two with a live app and a Telegram bot. That transparency is why DinarView reads Erbil more deeply than any other city, and why the Erbil boards need a short guide of their own, because they are printed in a way that trips up anyone used to Baghdad’s single number.
Where the market sits
Two clusters carry most of the retail trade. Ronaki, by the Haji Sulaiman Qassab mosque, is the old money street: Khaki Shaqlawa and Qamar Al-Fajr trade a few doors apart and their boards move within minutes of each other. 100 Metre Street and the towers around it hold the newer companies, Gailany among them, with the Ankawa and English Village offices serving the north and east of the city. The Qaysari bazaar, beside the citadel, is where the gold trade sits, and where a dollar1,588+0.52% changes hands in smaller notes.
How an Erbil board is printed
An Erbil board has a rule that a Baghdad board does not: the dinar row is the only row quoted in dinars. Every other currency is quoted against the dollar, in the unit the trade uses.
| Row on the board | Buy | Sell | What it means |
|---|---|---|---|
| IQD دینار | 154,500 | 154,575 | Dinars per 100 dollars |
| EUR یورو | 115.35 | 115.65 | Dollars per 100 euros |
| GBP پاوەند | 133.45 | 134.25 | Dollars per 100 pounds |
| TRY لیرە | 4,850 | 4,760 | Lira per 100 dollars |
| IRR تمەن | 21,500,000 | 19,000,000 | Toman per 100 dollars |
| SEK سویدی | 89.75 | 92 | Dollars per 1,000 kronor |
| SAR ریال | 383 | 373 | Riyals per 100 dollars |
Khaki Shaqlawa’s board, 3 September 2026. Rows where the sell figure is smaller than the buy figure are quoted the other way round: units of the currency per hundred dollars.
So a euro in Erbil is not priced in dinars at all. To get dinars per euro you chain two of the office’s own quotes: dollars per euro from the euro row, times dinars per dollar from the dinar row. On 3 September 2026 that was 1.1535 × 1,545 = 1,782 dinars, which is what the office would pay for a euro note, against a national mid of 1,799. DinarView performs that chain for every cross on every board it reads and labels the result “via the dollar”, because it is the office’s own price reached through the office’s own dollar rate, not a number from somewhere else.
The three Erbil boards DinarView reads
| Office | Where | Board | Dollar buy / sell, 3 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Khaki Shaqlawa Co. | Ronaki | Website, dated daily, 14 currencies | 154,500 / 154,575 |
| Gailany Money Exchange | 100 Metre Street | Website and app, live, with history charts and a Telegram bot | 154,250 / 155,000 |
| Tekan Exchange | English Village | Website; the dollar row had not moved since June, so it is excluded until it does | — |
| Qamar Al-Fajr | Ronaki | Website, dated daily, 16 currencies; behind an anti-bot screen, listed but not read automatically | — |
Per hundred dollars. The Erbil figure on DinarView is the median of the boards that are fresh: on 3 September 2026, 154,375 buy and 154,788 sell from two boards. A board that has not changed for a day and a half is dropped from the median, which is why Tekan is listed without a quote.
Erbil against Baghdad
The two cities are rarely more than half a percent apart, and the sign of the difference flips. Erbil’s independent offices adjust several times a day and quote both sides; Baghdad’s large chains print one national rate and hold it longer. On a quiet day Erbil sits a few hundred dinars per hundred above Baghdad, because dollars arrive in Baghdad first and travel north at a cost; on a day when the Baghdad session moves sharply, Erbil lags for an hour and then overshoots. The cities page prints the difference against the national median at every reading.
| 3 September 2026 | Buy | Sell | Spread | Boards |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Erbil (median) | 154,375 | 154,788 | 413 | 2 |
| Baghdad (Al-Taif) | 154,200 | 154,200 | — | 1 |
| National (median of all) | 154,250 | 154,575 | 325 | 3 |
Per hundred dollars, from the office boards. Baghdad’s single published rate has no spread of its own.
The toman: the row that only Kurdistan prints
Every Erbil board carries a row for Iranian money, labelled IRR but quoted in toman227,900−1.13%, the everyday unit of ten rials. Trade, pilgrimage and family across the border keep the toman in daily use in Kurdistan in a way it is not in Baghdad, and the boards quote it per hundred dollars in the millions: 21,500,000 toman buy, 19,000,000 sell, on 3 September 2026. The wide spread reflects a currency that has lost value almost every year.
DinarView carries the toman as IRT, in dinars per toman, from the Tehran free-market board, and shows the boards’ own quotes beside it where they are fresh. At about 170,000 toman per dollar and 1,546 dinars per dollar, one toman is worth about 0.009 dinars, which is why the site shows the pair to four decimal places: the number is small, not wrong.
Reading an Erbil board in thirty seconds
- Find the dinar row. It is the only one in dinars, per hundred dollars. Buy is what you get for a hundred-dollar note; sell is what you pay for one.
- For any other currency, ask whether the row is dollars per hundred units (euro, pound, franc) or units per hundred dollars (lira, riyal, dirham, toman). If the sell figure is smaller than the buy figure, it is the second kind.
- Multiply through the dinar row to get dinars, or let DinarView do it: every cross on the rate board is already in dinars per unit, with the office named.
- Check the date on the board. Khaki and Qamar print the day; Gailany prints the minute. A board with an old date is a board that has not been updated.
Questions people ask
Is the dollar cheaper in Erbil or in Sulaymaniyah?
DinarView does not yet read a Sulaymaniyah board, so it does not publish a Sulaymaniyah figure. The souq there is by the Khanqa mosque; its offices quote by phone and on social media rather than on public boards. When one publishes a board, the city will appear with a number, not a guess.
Do Erbil offices take dinars in any denomination?
Yes. They count, they do not care which notes. For dollars, clean new-series hundreds get the board rate; older or damaged notes and small denominations are bought lower.
Why does the Erbil figure move more often than Baghdad’s?
Because it is a median of independent offices that reprice through the day, while Baghdad’s figure is one chain’s national rate. More readings, more movement, closer to the trade.
The Erbil boards, the toman and every cross rate are on the Erbil page and the rate board, each with the time it was read.