Money, cards and ATMs in Botswana

The levy you have read about does not exist

• There is nothing to pay on arrival, and nothing to pay online beforehand. The US$30 Tourism Development Levy that travel sites still describe was announced for 1 June 2017 and the Bill was withdrawn in December 2017 before it was ever tabled.
• No Botswana government page publishes an arrival levy today. Neither the FCDO's entry requirements nor Global Affairs Canada's entry section lists one, and the government portal's own search returns nothing.
• The levy that does exist is charged through your bed. A tourism levy is collected from accommodation and paid into the Tourism Development Fund. Operators publish it at P10, about US$1, per person per night, included in the quoted rate.
• If a website asks you to prepay a Botswana travel levy, it is not a government service.

Cash across the border

• Declare pula or foreign banknotes worth P10,000 or more, on the way in and on the way out. There is no limit on how much you may move, only on doing it quietly.
• Travellers cheques and other monetary instruments do not have to be declared.
• Currency counts as goods under the Customs and Excise Duty Act, so an undeclared bundle is a customs offence, not an oversight.

The customs form and the allowance

• Everyone arriving declares their goods on Form J, the baggage declaration, verbally or in writing.
• The duty free allowance is 2 litres of wine, 1 litre of spirits, 200 cigarettes, 20 cigars, 250 g of tobacco, 50 ml of perfume and 250 ml of toilet water.
• Other goods up to R3,000 from outside the Southern African Customs Union, or R500 from within it. Botswana's allowance is written in South African rand because it sits inside SACU. Above that, a flat 20 per cent rate is available if you elect it.
• Failure to declare can mean seizure and a penalty of up to three times the value. Keep the receipts.

The pula itself

• The pula is linked to a basket of currencies, and the Bank of Botswana quotes it against the South African rand, the US dollar, the British pound and the euro. Those four are what banks and bureaux change most readily.
• The US dollar, euro, pound and South African rand are the currencies that change most easily, and lodges quoting in dollars still take pula and rand.
• Cash machines take foreign Visa cards but sit mostly in the larger towns, and a foreign withdrawal attracts extra fees. Draw what you need before you leave the tar.