Dollar Endorsement- Bangladesh

Bangladesh is Weird 

Let’s get one thing super straight- dollar endorsement is Bangladesh’s own creation.

Try it out yourself: Google ‘Dollar Endorsement in America’ and you’ll find zero articles or videos indicating that such a thing exists in the Western World.

So do you even need to endorse dollars? How do you do endorse dollars? And why do you need to do it anyway? Let’s fill the massive information gap today.

“Hey, how many dollars did you endorse?”

-Said no Western Immigration Officer, ever.

The Why of Endorsement

When it comes to Dollars or any sort of foreign currency, the financial system of Bangladesh is very peculiar. Fearful of money laundering and getting their reserve bank dry, the peculiar rules range from credit cards, to student file accounts and dollar endorsement.

Bangladesh government may be dumb, but they know that sometimes you need to transact in dollars. As a result, each Bangladeshi citizen is allotted $12,000 per year. You can, in essence, buy $12,000 dollars per year and use it for personal reasons.

For example, suppose I bought $5000 dollars today. For the next 365 days, the maximum I will be able to buy is $12,000 – $5000 = $7000.

This doesn’t include purchasing cash only, but also using dollars in prepaid/credit cards. If I endorse, say, $3000 dollars for my credit card, I’ll have $7000 – $3000 = $4000 left to be used for the rest of the year.

So, as a Bangladeshi citizen, the maximum dollars that you can carry with you, legally, is 12,000 dollars, per year, assuming you didn’t buy any dollars the rest of the year.

Ok cool. But, is endorsement really necessary?

Lessgo & Skip Endorsement

In all of my solo or group travels, I haven’t seen even Bangladeshi immigration officers caring about dollar endorsement. In truth, this is a decade old regulation that is not being followed by anyone except the financial institution.

So you can, in theory, carry $50,000 dollars and not endorse. You will never fall in trouble unless you shout out ‘HEYY I HAVE 50K IN MY BAAAAAGGG.’ They’ll obviously, well, search you.

Or, you can actually endorse $5000, and carry $15,000 in reality. I have never heard of anyone checking baggages to find ‘un-endorsed dollars,’ really.

Obviously I wouldn’t recommend, suggest or encourage any of this. Endorse the full amount you’ll carry to be on the safest side.

Endorsement Where

Money exchanges generally have better rates, but they are always wary of endorsing anything more than $500-$1000 dollars. They are fearful of any sort of blowout, and stay on the cautionary side.

Banks, on the other end, are happy to sell you dollars and endorse them without any ‘limit.’ Some banks may invent weird rules by themselves, declaring ‘Noooo we can’t endorse more than $5000 to students nooo.’ In that case, just leave the bank immediately. Seriously. Find a better fit

Western Countries don’t Care

America, Canada, or most other countries don’t care.

In theory, you can bring $100,000 and they are cool with it. There is no strict limit.

However, if you carry more than $10,000, you will have to declare it during immigration. That’s it. They just need the information to ensure you are not laundering money in from anywhere.

However, I’d suggest to carry as little cash as possible. Take money to last you for a few weeks. As soon as you land in your destination, open a bank account ASAP. Bank Officers will open the account in front of you in one hour. Or less. No Joke.

Transfer money from your Bangladeshi student file account to your personal bank account in the western world- it takes under three days. It will cost you a fair amount of fee, but that’s still better than the risk of carrying cash half way around the world– at least according to me.

End Note

Note that, again, this Dollar Endorsement Fiasco is not an issue for the Western World. As far as they are concerned, there is no page for endorsing in the last page of the passport.

Yeah, I know. Life is, sometimes, unnecessarily trickier. You’ll be amazed to learn about the tricky situation regarding credit, debit and prepaid cards in Bangladesh too. Click here to read, or go to sleep without worrying because…

You are a pro regarding Dollar Endorsement now, thanks to Samin.

Samin Rahman

Content Creator, UTD’24

I wrote this thing and I mean…if you don’t know me, check the url. You’re literally on my website.
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