Is Banking Easy in Mongolia?

This is one of my other gripes with Michael Kohn of Lonely Planet-Mongolia fame. Lonely Planet is the only travel guide company out there that makes a Mongolia guide, so Michael Kohn, the latest author, has a monopoly on tourist information. And sometimes he's wrong. As in when he says that "banking in Mongolia is a snap."

The one thing I'll give Kohn is that there a zillion banks in UB. I read the NYT article last week A Bank For Every Block and determined that Manhattan has nothing on Mongolia. Here, there are 17 different bank companies. All of which have the majority of their branches here in UB.

In another country, this might make it difficult to determine which bank to go to. Here, it's fairly easy; there are only three banks that are considered "clean" in the sense that they don't pay off the government: Xac Bank, Xhan Bank (which used to be the National ie, only bank in Mongolia), and the Trade and Development Bank. Otherwise, there is little to differentiate the banks. Almost none of them have ATMs, and it appears that just has Pepsi has a monopoly on soda in the Mall of America, Visa has a monopoly on debit and credit cards in Mongolia. A few banks accept Mastercard, but only when they feel like it. Most pretend they've never heard of Mastercard.

Mongolians are also a fan of lines, by which I mean they hate lines. By which I mean they shove to the front and pretend the line doesn't exist. Bank managers therefore like to exact pain on Mongolians by creating as many lines as possible. They often have you wait on one line to tell them how much money you would like. You may then have to wait on another line if you don't have an account there, where they will swipe your credit card or debit card, as though you are "purchasing" cash. For this you will get a receipt and you will watch the teller count out the proper amount of cash (all the money is on display here -- they seem to have no concerns about holdups). The teller will then walk the cash over to another teller whose line you will have to wait on to receive the cash. At which point you may snap, which could be what Michael Kohn meant to say.