How to receive USD in Georgia: holding dollars, converting to lari, and the 1% question
If you live in Georgia and bill foreign clients in dollars, the biggest lever is not which app you pick. It is whether you convert at all. TBC and Bank of Georgia both run USD and EUR sub-accounts alongside your lari one, so a client wire can land as dollars and sit there until you want lari. We found no sign of a rule that forces you to sell foreign currency, and Georgia is consistently described as having no currency controls, though we could not open the National Bank or any bank tariff page to confirm it, so treat that as settled practice rather than a citation. Read the first comparison below with that in mind: it prices converting a thousand dollars into lari, which is the thing this page is telling you that you may not need to do. The second table prices receiving dollars as dollars. When you do want lari, Wise is the cheapest of the four at roughly 1.5% all in on a thousand dollars, taken as a visible fee on the mid-market rate. Payoneer is the fallback if your money arrives through Upwork or Fiverr, though check the payout screen before you count on it, because we could not confirm that Payoneer converts to lari at all. Revolut and GrabrFi do not open accounts for Georgian residents, so treat them as something a client might send from rather than something you receive into. One more thing that catches people: if you hold Small Business Status, your 1% is calculated on the lari equivalent at the National Bank rate for the day each payment lands. That is an accounting conversion, not a real one. You can owe tax in lari and still be holding the dollars. Small Business Status is a separate application and consulting is on the excluded list, so do not assume the 1% is yours before you have it.
By George I. · Last updated:
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Provider comparison: receiving $1,000 USD in Georgia
Using live mid-market rate as of 2026-08-28 · open.er-api.com
| Provider | Net received (GEL) | Effective fee | FX margin | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wise | 2,574.77 | 1.47% | Mid-market | ~2 days |
| Payoneer | 2,535.42 | 1.00% | +2.0% | ~3 days |
| Western Union | 2,470.22 | 0.50% | +5.0%(est.) | ~1 day |
| Bank Wire | 2,433.56 | 3.50% | +3.5% | ~4 days |
Receiving without converting, in Georgia
Georgian banks issue USD and EUR sub-accounts alongside your lari account, so a dollar wire can be credited as dollars and left alone. This is what that costs. Note that the conversion spread is deferred rather than escaped: you pay your bank's rate whenever you eventually sell dollars for lari, and that gap is not shown to you as a fee.
Receiving $1,000 USD as USD
| Provider | Net received (USD) | Effective fee | FX margin | Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wise | 990.89 | 0.91% | No conversion | ~2 days |
| Payoneer | 988.50 | 1.15% | No conversion | ~3 days |
| Bank Wire | 965.00 | 3.50% | No conversion | ~4 days |
Receiving straight into a Georgian USD account
This is the route the rest of the page keeps pointing back to, so we describe it first. Be aware that it is also the last row in the lari comparison above, and for a reason worth understanding: that table prices a thousand dollars converted into lari, and a bank is the expensive way to do that. The second table prices the thing described here, which is a dollar wire landing in a dollar account and staying there. TBC and Bank of Georgia both issue USD and EUR IBANs alongside your lari account, and at Bank of Georgia the foreign currency sub-accounts are reported to be free to hold. Credo is a smaller bank that foreigners often find easier to open with, though we could not confirm that it offers foreign currency sub-accounts, and we have seen at least one report of a Credo account turning out to be unsuitable for SWIFT, so confirm both before you give the details to a client. A dollar wire into a dollar account converts nothing, so there is no conversion spread at that moment. What it does cost is the inbound side: your bank may take an incoming SWIFT commission, and a correspondent bank in the middle often deducts something, commonly reported in the ten to twenty-five dollar range, that nobody warns you about in advance. TBC is reported to offer an option where the sender pays the charges so you receive the full amount. We could not open any Georgian bank tariff page, so we are not publishing a figure for the receiving side. Ask your branch for the current tariff. The catch to be honest about is that the spread is deferred, not escaped. When you eventually sell dollars for lari you pay whatever your bank's rate of the day is. Banks do publish a daily buy and sell rate, so you can see the rate, but the gap against the mid-market rate is not shown as a line item and you have to work it out yourself.
How much does Wise charge to receive USD in Georgia?
The cheapest widely available way to turn dollars into lari, and the cheapest of the four in the lari comparison above. Wise opens accounts to Georgian residents and prices a USD to GEL transfer at roughly 1.5% all in on a thousand dollars, taken as a transparent fee on top of the real mid-market rate, with lari delivered to a Georgian bank account in about one to two business days. The percentage falls a little on larger amounts. The important unknown is on the receiving side. Wise gives US account details, a routing number and an account number, only to residents of a limited set of countries, and we could not confirm whether Georgia is one of them. That matters more than the fee: with USD details your client pays you by free domestic ACH, and without them your client has to send an international transfer instead, which changes both the cost and who pays it. Open the app and look at whether a USD balance with account details is actually offered to you before you plan around it. Reports also conflict on whether you can hold a lari balance in Wise and whether the Wise card is available to Georgian residents, so we are not making a claim either way. We could not open wise.com from our side, so verify the current fee in the app.
How much does Payoneer charge to receive USD in Georgia?
Widely used in Georgia, almost entirely because it is the default payout on Upwork, Fiverr and similar platforms. Payoneer charges up to 1% on incoming commercial payments, and that part is well established. Everything after it is murkier than the usual Payoneer story, and in a way that matters. The reporting we could reach says Payoneer's currency conversion does not cover the lari, which if correct means there is no such thing as a Payoneer withdrawal in lari and the realistic route is receiving dollars and moving them into your Georgian dollar account. Separately, Payoneer's cheap flat rate for same-currency withdrawals requires the destination account to be in a country where that currency is the official one, and dollars in Georgia do not meet that test, so the flat rate people quote does not apply here. We could not open Payoneer's pricing pages to settle either point, and the Payoneer line in the lari comparison above is modelled on a lari withdrawal we have not been able to confirm exists. Read the cost off your own payout screen rather than treating it as a number you can plan with.
How much does Western Union charge to receive USD in Georgia?
Available as a bank deposit rail into Georgia. Western Union advertises a free first online transfer to Georgian bank accounts, which is a promotion rather than a price, and we could not confirm how long it runs. The cost that matters is the one built into the exchange rate rather than the fee line, and Western Union does not disclose it as a separate item. Our own model uses a five percent spread for this corridor. That figure came from a general assumption about minor corridors rather than a quote we pulled for Georgia, which is why the comparison above marks it as estimated and why it cannot take the best value badge. Treat the Western Union row as an upper bound and get a live quote before you use it. The caveat that actually matters for a freelancer is different: this is consumer remittance pricing, built for someone sending money to family, not a published commercial rate for a client settling an invoice. How your transfer is classified is your client's decision, not yours, and it is the sender who chooses the fee and the rate. Fine as an occasional route, not a rail to build your invoicing on.
Providers not available in Georgia
Revolut: not available
Georgian residents cannot open a Revolut account, and the Revolut card is not available in Georgia either. A client in the US or the EU can still push a payment from their own Revolut account to your Georgian IBAN, which arrives as an ordinary international transfer, but that is your client using Revolut rather than you. Do not plan on holding a balance there.
GrabrFi: not available
GrabrFi opens accounts only to residents of a fixed list of countries, and Georgia is not on it, so this is not a route you can receive into. Local currency withdrawal is available in a shorter list still. We could not open GrabrFi's own eligibility page, so if you see it recommended for Georgia anywhere, check the signup flow before you believe it.
Paysera: not available
Not an option for dollars, but worth knowing about if any of your clients are in Europe. Paysera issues a Lithuanian IBAN that receives euros over SEPA at no cost, and it is reported to hold a National Bank of Georgia licence, which is why Georgian freelancers use it as a euro rail. We could not open the NBG register to confirm the licence. For a US client paying in dollars it does not help, which is why it is listed here rather than in the comparison above.
How we calculate these figures
The net received figure deducts the provider's published flat fee and percentage fee from the send amount, then converts at the live mid-market rate from open.er-api.com minus the provider's FX markup in basis points. Rates on this page refresh hourly (ISR). Fee data is sourced from each provider's public pricing page and verified periodically. Not every provider publishes an FX spread. Where one does not, we estimate it, mark the row “est.” in the FX margin column, and exclude it from the best-value badge, so the option we highlight is always one whose spread we can source.
Fee data for this corridor last verified 2026-06-02 or later; each provider card shows its own date. · Open-source fee data on GitHub
Frequently asked questions
Can I receive USD in Georgia without converting to lari?
Yes, and for a lot of freelancers this is the right answer. Georgian banks issue USD and EUR sub-accounts alongside your lari account, so a dollar wire from a client can be credited as dollars and stay that way. We found no sign of a rule that forces you to sell foreign currency, and Georgia is consistently described as having no currency controls, though we could not open the National Bank to confirm that directly. Holding dollars makes sense if your own costs are in dollars, if you are saving, or if you simply do not want to convert on your client's schedule rather than your own. Two trade-offs. The first is that you have deferred the spread rather than avoided it: whenever you do sell dollars for lari, your bank applies its own rate for that day, and the gap against the mid-market rate is not shown to you as a fee. The second is that holding dollars does not defer the tax. Your turnover is declared in lari at the National Bank rate for the day each payment arrived, whether or not you converted anything, and if you are on the monthly regime the tax is payable in lari every month, so you will need some lari on hand even in a month where you converted nothing.
Is the money safe if I just leave dollars sitting in a Georgian bank?
Deposits in Georgian banks are covered by a deposit insurance scheme, and the reported ceiling was raised to 50,000 lari per depositor per bank from April 2026, up from 30,000. Two details matter if you are using a Georgian account as a dollar savings pot. The limit is per bank, so a balance above it is only as safe as the bank itself. And a foreign currency deposit is reported to be compensated in lari at the National Bank rate on the day of the insured event, not in dollars, so the cover is a lari amount even though your balance is in dollars. We could not open the deposit insurance agency to confirm either figure, so verify the current limit before you decide how much to leave in one place.
How is my USD income converted for the 1% tax?
At the National Bank of Georgia official rate for the date each payment is received, calculated per payment rather than as one lump at year end. This is an accounting conversion and not a real one, which is the part that confuses people: you can declare and pay tax on a lari figure while the dollars are still sitting in your account untouched. If clients pay you several times in a month, each receipt is converted at that day's rate, so the arithmetic needs to match rather than use a monthly average. Declarations are filed monthly through rs.ge, and both the filing and the payment are due by the fifteenth of the following month. The usual advice we saw is that money landing in Wise, Payoneer or PayPal counts as received when it arrives there rather than when you move it to a Georgian bank, which would matter for the date you use, but we could not confirm that from the Revenue Service itself. We could not open rs.ge from our side, so confirm the current filing rules with an accountant rather than treating this as authoritative.
How much can I earn before I lose the 1% small business status?
The reported ceiling is 500,000 lari of turnover in a calendar year. Cross it and the rate on your turnover goes to 3% from the month you crossed, for the remainder of that tax year. Cross it in two consecutive years and Small Business Status is reported to be revoked, which drops you to the standard 20% personal income tax. Two things people miss. Registering as an Individual Entrepreneur does not by itself give you the 1% rate: Small Business Status is a separate application to the Revenue Service, and if you skip it you are simply an IE paying 20%. And the timing of that application matters. The rules changed in 2026, through a Ministry of Finance order on special tax regimes reported as published in February and effective in March, which reworked when status starts and how income earned before it starts is taxed. The version we saw describes a fifteen day window to apply after a triggering event, with income earned earlier in the year taxed at the standard 20% if you miss it. We could not open the tax authority or the legal text, so verify the ceiling, the deadline and the current rules with a Georgian accountant before planning around any of them.
Does consulting disqualify me from the 1% tax?
Possibly, and this is the live risk for a lot of the people reading this page. The list of activities excluded from Small Business Status includes consulting, alongside licensed activities, currency exchange, medical, architectural, legal, notarial and audit work, gambling and personnel supply. What nobody can tell you crisply is where consulting ends and ordinary freelance service work begins, because the law does not draw that line sharply. One reading we saw treats technical and software advice as fine while investment and financial advice is not, but that is commentary from a service provider rather than a ruling, and we would not want you to rely on it. If your work could reasonably be described as advisory, this is worth thirty minutes with a Georgian accountant before you register, not after. Getting the activity code wrong at registration is a great deal more expensive to fix later.
Can I open a Wise account in Georgia, and will I get USD account details?
The account, yes: Wise opens accounts to Georgian residents and runs a Georgian site. The account details are the open question, and they are the part that actually decides your cost. Wise issues US account details, a routing number and an account number that accept a free domestic ACH, only to residents of a limited set of countries, and we could not confirm whether Georgia is one of them. If you get them, a US client pays you like a domestic supplier and it costs nothing to receive. If you do not, your client has to send an international transfer instead, which is slower and carries a fee somebody has to pay. Open the app and look at what is actually offered under a USD balance before you send details to a client. Reports also disagree about whether Wise lets you hold a lari balance and whether the Wise card works for Georgian residents, so we are not claiming either way.
Do I need to register for VAT if all my clients are abroad?
We could not resolve this one and would rather say so than guess. Georgian VAT registration is reported to become mandatory above 100,000 lari of taxable supplies in any rolling twelve months. What is genuinely unclear from the sources we could reach is how services exported to non-resident clients are treated: some describe them as zero-rated, others as falling outside the scope of Georgian VAT altogether, and those are different treatments with different consequences for whether that revenue counts toward the threshold at all. That distinction decides whether a freelancer billing 150,000 lari to foreign clients needs to register or not, which is not a detail. The tax authority and legal text sites are blocked from our side, so we cannot settle it. Ask a Georgian accountant specifically about place of supply for your service type, and get the answer in writing.
What will the bank ask for when a client transfer arrives?
Standard anti-money-laundering questions, and they get more thorough as the amount goes up. Expect to be asked for the contract or the invoice behind the payment, and to show that you actually carry on the business activity you say you do. The single most useful habit is making sure the payment purpose your client writes on the transfer matches what your invoice says, because a mismatch is what triggers a slow manual review. We found no sign of a Georgian equivalent of the remittance certificate that some countries issue, so as far as we can tell your evidence of foreign income is the bank statement plus the matching invoice, and that is what your accountant and the Revenue Service will work from. Keep both filed per payment rather than reconstructing them at year end.
How much cash can I bring into Georgia without declaring it?
The reported threshold is 30,000 lari or the equivalent in another currency, above which you must declare the money to customs when crossing the border, with penalties for failing to. This one is worth mentioning only because people find the figure and assume it is a limit on bank transfers. It is not. It applies to physical cash and other bearer instruments you carry across the border in person, and it has nothing whatsoever to do with a client wiring dollars into your account. There is no transfer ceiling of that kind in Georgia. We could not open the customs code itself, so treat the exact figure as one to verify if you are actually planning to travel with cash.
Written by George I. (20+ years in international payments). Last updated: .
Fees are estimates from publicly available pricing. Verify with your provider before transferring. Nothing on this site is financial or tax advice. How we make money.