Card Payments for Businesses in Georgia: Acquiring, Online Checkout and Transfers

A shop in Georgia accepts cards through a bank POS terminal for 1.5-2.4% of each sale, while an online store needs a payment gateway tied to a business account in lari. Within the country, banks move money instantly by phone number, and payments abroad go by SWIFT or through Wise.

Card Payments in Store: POS Terminals

What you pay for acquiring depends on which bank issued the customer's card. A standard TBC Bank terminal charges 1.5% (minimum 0.1 lari) on TBC cards, 1.7% on cards from partner banks and 2% on other Georgian cards.

Foreign cards cost 2.4%, or 1.6% if the customer pays with dynamic currency conversion (DCC). The money reaches the merchant's account the same day, with no aggregator in the middle. If a terminal's fees for the month total less than 50 lari, the bank charges the difference.

Bank of Georgia and other banks follow the same tiered model, but each one sets its own rate per merchant and can change it. Get current quotes from several banks before you sign.

Cash Payments and the AML Threshold

Most businesses can accept cash with no limit. Georgia's anti-money-laundering law sets a 30,000 lari threshold for dealers in precious metals and stones: they must verify the buyer whenever a single cash purchase, or a series of linked ones, exceeds it.

A shop, café or IT company doesn't report anything to the Financial Monitoring Service directly. Under the anti-money-laundering law of Georgia, reporting falls only to obliged entities: banks, exchange offices, payment providers, notaries, auditors, precious metals dealers and a few others.

An ordinary business runs into the threshold at its bank, which may ask about the source of funds before accepting a large cash deposit. In most retail and everyday services this rarely happens. It matters mainly for sellers of expensive goods, where a single cash sale can go over the limit.

Taking Payments Online: Payment Gateways

BoG iPay, the online gateway of Bank of Georgia, accepts Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Shoppers can pick an online installment plan at checkout, and the bank sets fees for each merchant individually.

Online acquiring through TBC E-Commerce costs 2% for Georgian cards and 2.5% for foreign ones, plus 0.4% for Apple Pay. There is a monthly minimum of 50 lari: if your fees fall short of it, the bank charges the difference.

A single purchase through TBC E-Commerce is capped at 1,500 lari, and on foreign card payments the bank holds back a 10% reserve for 6 months plus a fixed 500 lari. Payze, a Tbilisi startup that went through Y Combinator, connects online stores, Shopify shops included, and also operates in Uzbekistan.

Smaller providers (Credo, Flitt, UniPay and others) offer similar terms: 1.5-3% for card payments, 0.5-1.5% for local payment methods, a 0.5-2% markup on currency conversion, a one-time setup fee of 100-500 lari and payouts within 1-3 business days.

Flitt publishes its prices openly: 2.2% for Georgian cards (2% on turnover of 10,000-50,000 lari) and 2.5% for foreign cards, with payouts within 24 hours in lari, dollars or euros. It only works with a TBC account. Stripe doesn't serve companies registered in Georgia, so online checkout here goes through local gateways.

Only a registered business can connect a gateway, either as an IE in Georgia or an LLC in Georgia. You'll also need a business bank account in Georgia, because providers won't process an application without one.

Domestic Transfers: Phone Numbers and Instant Payments

A transfer by phone number reaches the recipient's account instantly, at any hour. Bank of Georgia launched the system with Basisbank in September 2025, and ProCredit Bank and Credo Bank have signed agreements to join. A single transfer can be up to 10,000 lari, with no limit on the number of transfers per day.

Keepz, a separate service, has run around the clock since October 2025 and connects several banks: Silk Bank, Tera Bank, Pasha Bank Georgia, Credo Bank and Basisbank. It handles lari, dollars and euros, launched with a fee of 0.50 lari per transfer and allows up to 100,000 lari a day.

International Transfers: SWIFT and the Alternatives

For an outgoing SWIFT transfer, banks charge a percentage with a minimum and a cap. On the TBC tariff for private clients, a dollar transfer costs 0.2%, with a minimum of $15 and a maximum of $150.

An incoming SWIFT transfer to Georgia at Bank of Georgia costs 0.2%, minimum $15. The total can climb by $15-40 if a correspondent bank on the route isn't listed in the payment details and deducts its own fee.

A transfer takes anywhere from one to several business days. If the payment currency differs from the account currency, the bank converts it automatically, usually at a less favorable rate.

For small, regular payments Wise Business often comes out cheaper: it converts at the mid-market rate and charges only its own fee, with no SWIFT or correspondent bank charges. The account is opened in the company's name under its tax ID, but taxes can only be paid to the Revenue Service from a Georgian bank.

For large sums, a standard SWIFT transfer from a bank with a low outgoing tariff is usually the cheaper option, because the percentage stops at the cap.

Fees and Contract Terms to Check

Mir cards don't work in Georgia, and cards issued by sanctioned banks may be declined both in Georgia and abroad. Check this ahead of time if you expect customers or partners from those jurisdictions.

When choosing a gateway, ask about the settlement currency (most settle only in lari, and multi-currency options are rare) and how quickly payouts arrive. Acquiring rates in Georgia aren't fixed by law: they are commercial terms, and you can usually negotiate them down as your turnover grows.

Under most contracts, the bank keeps the acquiring fee from the original payment when a customer gets a refund. A chargeback, a reversal the card network forces after a customer dispute, usually carries a separate penalty no matter who was at fault. Check both clauses before you sign, because providers rarely bring them up on their own.