Best Place to Exchange Money in Cologne

01Exchange

Where to change money in Cologne

Both ReiseBank outlets below are at Köln Hauptbahnhof, beside the cathedral. At the counter, ask for the full euro payout, fees included, and compare it with a card withdrawal.

• ReiseBank counter, Köln Hauptbahnhof ↗Deutsche Bahn's station guide puts it in the first-floor D-Passage, beside the ibis Hotel. Open daily: weekdays 08:00 to 19:00, Sundays 09:00 to 17:00; Saturday closing times differ between ReiseBank (18:00) and Deutsche Bahn (20:00). It stocks up to 100 currencies, and anyone paying over €2,500 in cash must show where the funds came from.
• ReiseBank exchange machine, Trankgasse 11 ↗Available around the clock, to the right of the ticket machines. Besides taking US dollar, sterling, Swiss franc and Danish krone notes, it lets card holders withdraw euros, Swiss francs, pounds or US dollars.

02On arrival

Changing money at the airport

At Cologne Bonn Airport, Travelex exchanges currency landside in two places: Terminal 1 by Departure C (06:00 to 21:30) and the Terminal 2 arrivals hall, for which the airport lists no hours. For card withdrawals, Sparkasse KölnBonn, the local savings bank, runs 24-hour machines in the public areas at Terminal 1 Departure C, Terminal 2 Departure D and Terminal 2 arrivals.

03Cash machines and cards

ATMs and cards in Cologne

ReiseBank lists two round-the-clock euro cash machines in the station, which Deutsche Bahn places in the first-floor B-Passage (towards platform 1) and A-Passage (towards platform 8). At a Hauptbahnhof cash machine or a brewhouse card reader, turn down conversion into pounds or dollars and pay in euros; HSBC says the rate the retailer or its bank then applies is usually higher. Cards are common but not universal: in the Bundesbank's Germany-wide 2025 payments study, a cashless option existed for 86 per cent of in-person purchases.

04Getting around

Paying for transport in Cologne

KVB's app sells eezy.nrw fares: check in by swiping before the trip and out after it, and pay by straight-line distance, which the VRS table (as at 1 June 2026) prices at €1.66 per trip plus €0.27 per kilometre for an adult in second class in the Rhineland, capped at €27.80 per 24 hours; fares can change. The KölnCard (from €9) covers the city's buses, trams and trains for 24 or 48 hours and is sold at Tourist Information (Kardinal-Höffner-Platz 1), in the KVB app and at KVB and Deutsche Bahn machines. In September 2025 KVB announced plans to replace the ticket machines on its trams and buses with card readers, so check before boarding whether yours still sells tickets.

05Local know-how

Good to know

• In the traditional brewhouses, a waiter known as the Köbes serves Kölsch in small 0.2-litre glasses; put your beer mat on top of your glass to show you have had enough.
• Cash still works almost everywhere in Germany: across about 2,060 Bundesbank test purchases in summer 2025, 99.4 per cent of the outlets visited accepted it.