Part 6 of 9
Where to exchange money in Mosul: University Street, the North Garage and a market rebuilding itself
Nineveh has 57 licensed exchange companies again, most of them in Mosul. Where they are, which stay open around the clock, and how the city's dollar follows Erbil and Baghdad.
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Where to exchange money in Basra: the Jazair Street cluster and the port city’s dollar
Mosul’s money market disappeared for three years and has spent the years since rebuilding. The Central Bank’s register now lists 57 licensed exchange companies in Nineveh, most of them in the city, which puts the governorate level with Najaf and ahead of Kirkuk. The offices are newer than in Baghdad or Erbil, the streets they gather on have shifted, and more of them keep unusual hours, because the city’s trade with Erbil, Turkey and the rest of Iraq runs on a clock of its own.
Where the offices are
University Street on the east bank is the busiest run of exchangers. Manfath Al-Jawda is here, and it is open twenty-four hours, which makes it the office to know if you arrive at night. Al-Masarif Street, the street of banks, is where Al-Qand‘s Mosul branch sits among the bank branches that returned to the city. The North Garage area, the coach station for Erbil, Duhok and Turkey, has its own exchangers for travellers; Al-Hurut, a licensed company with a website, is in this district. The Cultural Group area holds a further cluster of smaller counters; Manfath Dimashq is one of them.
Al-Fanjan, the Baghdad transfer company, keeps a Mosul branch on its national number. Al-Taif has a Mosul branch too, without a confirmed street address, so it is not yet on the Mosul page.
The offices DinarView lists
| Office | Where | Board online | Phone | Hours |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manfath Al-Jawda | University Street | No | +964 770 166 2406 | 24 hours |
| Al-Hurut | North Garage | No | — | Daily |
| Manfath Dimashq | Cultural Group area | No | — | Daily |
| Al-Qand, Mosul branch | Al-Masarif Street | No | 7525 | Saturday–Thursday 09:00–21:00 |
| Al-Fanjan, Mosul branch | Mosul | No | +964 780 900 0072 | Daily |
All five, with maps, are on the Mosul page. No Mosul office publishes a board DinarView can read, so the page shows no number and says why.
How Mosul quotes
Dinars per $100, buy and sell, for new-series notes. Mosul sits between two markets that do publish: Erbil, an hour east, whose boards DinarView reads, and Baghdad, whose single readable board it also reads. On an ordinary day the Mosul counter price falls between the two and closer to Erbil, because most of the city’s cash comes up the Erbil road. The spread at the counter is 250 to 500 dinars per $100, wider at the North Garage where the customers are in a hurry.
Turkish lira48.78+0.23% is Mosul’s second currency, traded for the cross-border trucking and the shopping runs to Turkey. The street quotes it as lira per $100, the Erbil convention, and a lira-to-dinar figure is two steps away. The Syrian pound still appears on a few boards for the trade west, at prices that change daily and that no feed publishes.
Before you go
- Check Erbil’s boards first. Khaki and Gailany publish before Mosul’s offices open. If a Mosul counter quotes more than a few hundred dinars per $100 worse than Erbil, walk on.
- Night arrivals. Manfath Al-Jawda on University Street is open around the clock. The North Garage counters open with the first coaches.
- Official-rate dollars. Al-Qand on Al-Masarif Street sells travel dollars at the Central Bank’s 1,310 with a passport and ticket. It is the only listed Mosul office that does.
- Ask for the licence. Newer offices are the rule in Mosul and most are licensed; the register lists every one. A counter that cannot show a licence number should not have your money.
A market rebuilding itself
Mosul’s exchangers have no online boards yet for the same reason the city’s shops have few websites: the businesses are young. That will change as it did in Erbil, where two companies published and the rest followed within a year. DinarView lists the offices now, with the numbers they publish, so that the day a Mosul board goes online the city page has a source ready to name. If you run an office in Mosul, the office form reaches us the same day.
A worked example: lira for a shopping trip
A Mosul family driving to Gaziantep for a week wants 30,000 Turkish lira. The counter on University Street quotes lira the Erbil way, per $100: at the rates on the day this guide was written, about 4,840 lira per $100, so the 30,000 lira cost about $620, and the $620 cost about 959,000 dinars at a sell price near 154,650 per $100. The office adds its margin on the lira leg, and the family that compares University Street with the North Garage before buying will find the garage counters 100 to 300 lira per $100 worse, because their customers are on a bus that leaves in ten minutes. The better plan is to buy half the lira in Mosul and the rest in Turkey, where a bank card at a cash machine gives a rate close to the interbank one. Nobody should buy lira at the border.
East bank, west bank
Before 2014 Mosul’s exchangers were in the old city on the west bank, around the souqs by the river. The market that returned after 2017 settled on the east bank instead, along University Street and the roads to Erbil, because that is where the traders, the students and the reconstruction money were. The old city’s counters are reopening street by street, but the price is still made on the east bank, and an office on the west bank quotes what its owner heard from University Street that morning. For a visitor this means one thing: the east bank is where to compare, and the west bank is where to be careful. DinarView’s Mosul page will show a number the day an office on either bank publishes one.
Questions readers ask
Is Mosul’s rate closer to Erbil’s or Baghdad’s? Erbil’s, most days, by a small margin. The road east carries most of the city’s cash.
Can I change Turkish lira in Mosul? On University Street and at the North Garage, yes. The quote is against the dollar1,588+0.52%; ask for the dinar figure as well.
Where do I change money late at night? Manfath Al-Jawda, University Street, twenty-four hours.
Why is there no Mosul number on DinarView? No Mosul board can be read yet. The offices are listed with their phones; the number will appear the day a board opens.