Cash in northern Madagascar: the price that sounds five times wrong
The single most useful thing to know about money in the north is not where the cash machines are. It is that a price said out loud may be quoted in a currency that stopped existing in 2005 — and if you hand over the number you heard, you pay five times too much.
The number that is five times wrong
Madagascar's currency is the Ariary. It replaced the Malagasy franc in 2005, at 1 Ariary = 5 francs.
Twenty years later a great many people still think and speak in francs. Not to mislead anyone — it is simply the number that sounds normal to them, the way older people in Europe still convert to the old currency in their heads.
This is not theory. When we asked our own driver to confirm our extra-baggage fee in August 2026, he wrote back:
"Oui 50 000 fr"
He meant 50,000 francs. That is 10,000 Ariary — the figure we had proposed. A traveller who heard "fifty thousand" and handed over 50,000 Ariary would have paid five times the price, and nobody would have been lying to them.
How to protect yourself, without being rude about it: when a price is said out loud and it seems surprisingly high, ask "ariary ou francs?" It is a completely normal question in Madagascar and nobody is offended by it. If the answer is francs, divide by five.
A useful sanity check: the number that sounds like a lot is usually francs.
What genuinely has to be cash
Card payment barely exists outside the big hotels, and a card is no use at all at a park gate. These are the costs where cash is not optional:
National park entry. 45,000 Ariary per person per day at the moment. From November 2026 the foreign entry fee rises to 90,000. Night walks and similar activities are charged separately at 50,000. See our [park fees guide](/guides/park-fees-northern-madagascar-2026) for the full table and what changes.
The compulsory park guide. At Ankarana and Montagne d'Ambre this is charged per group rather than per person — roughly 20,000 to 60,000 Ariary a day depending on the circuit, so two travellers pay one fee. At Marojejy it works differently and porters are extra, from 7,000 Ariary.
The vehicle ferry to Nosy Be. About 200,000 Ariary each way, 400,000 return, and it takes two hours. A foot passenger pays around 20,000. Those are our own driver's figures from crossing in August 2026, not a guidebook's.
Everyday things. Meals outside hotels, market stalls, drinks, tips, the small communal taxes some places charge. None of it is expensive; all of it is cash.
What you do not need cash for
Our own price is one number, agreed before you travel, and you pay your driver at the end — cash or mobile money, whichever suits you. Nothing is added afterwards and nothing appears on your hotel bill. The driver's meals and his room are already inside the price on multi-day tours.
The only thing we ever add is 10,000 Ariary for a bag beyond your allowance, and you would know about that before departure, not at the roadside.
The honest gap: we will not tell you where the ATMs are
You will find blogs that list cash machines in Sambava, Antalaha or Diego Suarez by name, and state confidently which cards they accept.
We are not going to do that, because we have not stood in front of those machines with a foreign card and watched what happened. Bank branches close, machines run out of notes at the end of a month, and a card that works in the capital is not a promise about a smaller town. Publishing a list we have not checked would be the kind of confident-sounding detail that gets somebody stranded.
What we will say, because it follows from everything above: draw your cash in the larger towns and carry the park fees with you. A gate in a national park is the wrong place to discover that the nearest working machine is two hours away.
If you are travelling with us, ask your driver on the first day. He lives there, he will know which machine was working last week, and that is worth more than anything written down months in advance — including by us.
One last thing about notes
Ariary notes go up in denominations that make park fees a thick handful rather than a couple of bills. Two people at Ankarana for a day, with entry, a guide and the drive, is a real stack of paper. It is normal. Bring an envelope, keep it somewhere sensible, and do not count it out at the gate in front of everybody.