Money in San Marino, what to bring and how to pay

Money in San Marino is simple for anyone who has been to Italy. You pay in euros, just as in Rimini, and there’s nothing new to learn at the till. Behind that normality, though, sit a couple of quirks worth knowing, because they explain why the change in your pocket looks different and why shops talk about a tax that isn’t VAT.

Why euros, if it isn’t in the EU?

San Marino isn’t a member of the European Union. Its own foreign ministry says so plainly, calling it legally a third state. Even so, the euro is its official currency. The reason is a monetary agreement signed in Brussels on 27 March 2012, in force from 1 September that year. Article 1 recognises San Marino’s right to have the euro as its official currency, with a duty to give legal tender status to euro notes and coins.

That agreement replaced an earlier one of 29 November 2000, which San Marino signed with Italy on behalf of the Community. The history goes further back. Poste San Marino dates the Republic’s first coin, a copper 5-cent piece, to 1864, struck at the Royal Mint in Milan, and from 1972 its coins had the same legal tender status as Italy’s under a new agreement. If you’re curious how the country fits with Europe, I explain it in is San Marino a country?

Coins with a face of their own

The same agreement lets San Marino mint its own euro coins. They weigh and spend like any other euro, with only the national side different. On today’s series, per the ECB, the €2 carries the saint as painted by Urbinelli, the €1 the Cesta and the 20 cent the Titano and its towers.

They’re worth exactly the same as any other euro, in San Marino, Italy or Spain. There just aren’t many in circulation, and plenty of people keep them. I think they’re the cheapest souvenir of the trip. There are collector coins too, and the gold ones in scudi aren’t legal tender in the EU. The whole world of coins and stamps is in San Marino coins and stamps.

Cards, cash and your pounds

I’ll be honest here. I found no general source, official or otherwise reliable, on card acceptance in San Marino. The only documented case is the San Marino Outlet, which has a cash machine and requires a credit card in the buyer’s name for tax-free shopping. I won’t tell you cards work everywhere, because I don’t know that.

So I’d do what I’d do in any Italian hill town. Use a card as the main method and carry some euros for a piadina, a coffee or the Thursday market in Borgo Maggiore. If you’re flying into Rimini, the airport lists a cash machine and an exchange desk at the ticket office, which it says charges no commission. And if a card terminal ever offers to charge you in pounds, I’d pick euros and let my own bank handle the conversion.

A tax that isn’t VAT

Shops here don’t add VAT. Instead there’s the imposta monofase, a tax of San Marino’s own that the tax office collects when products are imported. A private website reckons it generally undercuts Italian VAT, trimming the price of fashion, footwear, fragrances and gadgets. Its rate doesn’t appear in the official sources I’ve read, and there’s a much-quoted number I haven’t been able to check, so I’m keeping it to myself.

For a UK visitor there’s a better-documented saving, the outlet’s tax-free scheme for non-EU residents, which I set out with its conditions in how the outlet’s tax-free works.

Is San Marino expensive?

The basics aren’t. The bus from Rimini costs €7, the cable car €4 one way and the pass for every state museum €11, with the two towers you can enter, the State Museum and the art gallery included. What climbs is eating in the panoramic restaurants of the old town, which a private site puts at €35 to €70 a head, against €6 to €10 for a piadina. Those figures have no date or method, so treat them as a ballpark.

Where I’d spend is the museum pass, which I think is among the best value in the country, and it’s all in San Marino’s museums. Where I’d save is lunch. A piadina in the sun beats a table with a view at a view’s price, and there are more ideas in free and cheap San Marino. I add up a typical day, with bus, pass and lunch, in the cost of a trip to San Marino.