***?? INTERAC in the DR ?? ***

***?? INTERAC in the DR ?? ***

I know you can get money out of bank machines in the DR, but is there a catch to it? Does your bank (I'm from Canada so it's a Canadian Bank) realize the money exchange? etc... If anyone can help out, that'd be great. I know travellers checks are great, but I'm going for 5 months, so that's not too useful... Thank everyone!
-Patrick B
patbeauchemin@hotmail.com

The big catch is that there seem to be arbitrary daily limits--eg no more than 4000 DRpesos/day. That and the fact that the machines may not always work, that it depends on where you are (no prob in Santo Domingo, can't speak for the rest of the country). Our bank (Royal) seems to have no problems. We are here for 2 years and don't even have bank accounts in the DR. No in-store interac (at least with international cards, that I know of...). And actually, travellers cheques are great--even for five months. We lived on a combination of them and interac in Mexico for 7 months. Just keep track of the numbers in case you lose them. A credit card is good for emergencies, too--stick with Visa, AMEX is only represented by one bank here, and if thier system is down (lots) you are out of luck.
Enjoy.

The only problem I ever noticed was the charge - as much as $4.50 CDN tacked on to every transaction when I used a card to get money from a machine. I did have trouble with a machine in Sosua which was very slow about returning my card, however the Plaza in Playa Dorada worked very efficiently and also the bank there was very obliging abour changing 1,000 peso notes down to 50 peso notes for me.

Re: There are no daily machine limits

There is no such thing as a daily machine limit. Approval is done by the issuing institution, or by "stand-in" rules, which can be anything from a lower daily or single transaction limit to complete denial when unable to contact the issuing institution.

ATM Machines do have specific limits on how much one can withdraw in a single transaction and if that is not as much as your personal daily limit, you just have to do another transaction.