Where Can I Exchange Foreign Coins? A Fast, Easy & 100% Guaranteed Guide

Posted by: Ian • 22 Aug 2025

Staring at that jar of leftover holiday money, wondering where on earth can I exchange foreign coins? The simplest answer, by far, is a specialised mail-in service. It’s a fast, easy, and hassle-free approach designed to turn that jumble of forgotten currency into cash, without the usual fuss you get at high street banks or airport kiosks.

The Easiest Way to Exchange Foreign Coins and Notes

We’ve all been there. You get back from a trip abroad with a pocketful of unfamiliar coins and a few leftover notes. They get tucked away in a drawer, but that forgotten currency is real money just waiting to be claimed. The problem? Most traditional places, like banks, simply aren't interested in handling foreign coins.

This is exactly where our dedicated mail-in service comes in. It’s built to handle what others won’t: your mixed bag of foreign coins and notes, even old or obsolete currency that’s no longer in circulation. The whole thing is designed to be quick, easy, and completely hassle-free, with no need to sort your coins.

A Process Built on Trust and Simplicity

We've built our service on a foundation of trust. We’re proud to be the go-to partner for major UK brands, including well-known charities, supermarkets, airports, and even police forces who rely on us to manage their currency collections. This isn’t just about convenience; it’s about providing a secure and reliable service you can count on that is 100% guaranteed.

A quick look at why our service is so effective for exchanging leftover foreign coins and notes.

Comparing Your Foreign Coin Exchange Options

Feature	Our Mail-In Service	Traditional Methods (Banks, Post Office)
Coins Accepted?	Yes, all coins from any country.	No, almost never accepted.
Obsolete Currency?	Yes, we accept old and out-of-circulation currency.	No, only current legal tender is accepted.
Sorting Required?	No, just send everything mixed together.	Yes, notes must be sorted by currency.
Convenience	High, send from home at any time.	Low, requires a trip during opening hours.
Speed of Payment	Fast, once we receive your currency.	Can be slow, with potential holds or delays.

As you can see, a specialised service is designed from the ground up to solve the exact problem you're facing, making it a much more practical choice.

Here are just a few of the key benefits:

No Sorting Needed: Just throw all your leftover currency together—coins, notes, it doesn't matter. We’ll sort it all out for you, saving you a tedious job.
Fast and Easy: The entire process is built for convenience, letting you convert your money without even leaving the house.
100% Guaranteed: We offer complete peace of mind with a satisfaction guarantee, ensuring every transaction is transparent and secure.

By getting rid of the hurdles that make traditional exchanges so frustrating, we've made it simple to finally turn those foreign coins and notes into pounds sterling. You can find out more about how to unlock the value of your leftover foreign coins in our detailed guide.

Why Banks Won’t Take Your Foreign Coins

It’s a story every traveller knows well. You walk into your local bank or Post Office with a bag of leftover holiday money, ready to change it back. They’ll usually take your banknotes without a fuss, but the second you pull out a handful of coins, you get a polite but firm "no". It's a common frustration that leaves people wondering where on earth they can actually exchange foreign coins.

The reason they turn you away isn't personal; it's pure economics. For big financial institutions, handling foreign coins is a logistical and financial nightmare. Banknotes are worth more and are easy to process, but coins? They're heavy, bulky, and each one is worth very little.

Imagine your local supermarket trying to manage a single, solitary penny. The cost of an employee's time to count it, the security to transport it, and the admin to process it would dwarf the penny's actual value. Banks face the exact same problem, just on a global scale.

The Hidden Costs of Sending Coins Home

When a bank takes in foreign currency, it doesn't just sit in a vault. It eventually has to be sent back to its home country to be credited—a process called repatriation. And for coins, this journey is riddled with costs.

Sorting and Counting: Every single coin needs to be identified, sorted by country and value, and then counted accurately. This is a massive job that either needs expensive, specialised machinery or a huge amount of manual labour, especially when dealing with a big, jumbled mix.
Weight and Shipping: Coins are basically small discs of metal, and they get heavy fast. Shipping tonnes of metal across international borders is incredibly expensive. The freight and insurance costs alone can easily add up to more than the face value of the coins themselves.
Administrative Overheads: On top of everything else, there’s a mountain of paperwork and admin involved in repatriating currency. This adds another layer of expense that makes handling low-value coins completely impractical for banks.

At the end of the day, for a bank to process a few of your euro cents or American dimes, it would end up spending pounds just to get them home. It’s a guaranteed loss, which is why they universally refuse to exchange foreign coins and notes when coins are part of the mix.

A Problem That Needs a Specialised Solution

This is exactly where a specialist service comes in. While your high street bank is built for big-money transactions, we've designed our entire operation to handle the very things they can't. We have the systems in place to efficiently collect, sort, and convert foreign coins and banknotes in huge volumes.

By pooling together small stashes of currency from thousands of different people, we create a large enough volume to make the whole process worthwhile. This is how we can offer you a fast, simple, and hassle-free way to deal with your leftover currency, turning a common headache into a quick and easy transaction. It's why major UK brands, charities, and even police forces trust us—we solve the exact problem the banks can't.

How Mail-In Currency Exchange Services Work

So, you’ve hit a wall trying to figure out where can I exchange foreign coins. The banks said no, and the post office was a non-starter. The good news is there’s a much better way – a modern solution designed for this exact problem. A mail-in currency exchange service is by far the simplest, most efficient way to turn that jar of leftover currency into real cash, all without leaving your home.

The whole process is refreshingly straightforward. Forget about the tedious job of separating currencies or squinting at tiny coins to figure out which ones are still in circulation. You just gather up all your leftover foreign money – coins and notes, all mixed together from any country – and pack it up securely. It’s a fast, easy, and completely hassle-free approach that requires no sorting.

Once it's packaged, you pop it in the post to us. From there, we take care of everything. Our expert team gets to work on the complex job of sorting, identifying, and counting every single piece. This isn't just for current money; we handle old and obsolete currency, and even pre-decimal coins that have been out of circulation for decades.

A Secure and Guaranteed Process

Trust is everything when you're sending money through the post, which is why our service is 100% guaranteed. We're proud to be the trusted partner for many of the UK’s most recognisable organisations, including major charities, supermarkets, airports, and even police forces. They all rely on our secure and transparent process to convert foreign coins and banknotes into funds they can actually use.

This infographic shows just how much effort is usually involved when you try to exchange foreign coins the old-fashioned way.

As you can see, the traditional route means a lot of manual sorting and schlepping around town – all things our service is designed to eliminate for you.

Turning Your Currency into Cash

After we receive and process your currency, we calculate its total value based on our clear exchange rates. You then get paid directly via your chosen method, whether that's a bank transfer or PayPal. The entire transaction is designed to be as seamless as possible.

Our service works by simplifying a process that’s just too complicated and time-consuming for individuals to tackle alone. By combining countless small collections from people like you, we create the volume needed to make the exchange process efficient and worthwhile for everyone.

It helps to understand the bigger picture. The UK's foreign exchange market is incredibly active; in April 2025, the average daily FX turnover hit a record high of $4,045 billion. While this huge market offers plenty of options for exchanging banknotes, the high volume and fast pace mean there's a massive gap when it comes to handling fiddly foreign coins. You can read the full research on the UK’s dynamic foreign exchange market from the Bank of England.

Whether you want to get paid for your collection or donate foreign coins to charity, our mail-in system provides a reliable and straightforward path. It’s the definitive answer for anyone looking for an effective way to exchange foreign coins and notes.

Ready to get started? Visit our homepage to begin your exchange today.

The Trouble with Traditional Exchange Options

When you get back from a trip with a pocketful of leftover currency, what’s your first instinct? For most of us, it’s a quick trip to a high street bank, the Post Office, or maybe an airport bureau de change. These seem like the obvious places to exchange foreign coins and notes.

And for banknotes, they do the job just fine. They’re well-equipped to swap your paper money back into pounds without any fuss. But that’s where the service screeches to a halt, leaving many travellers confused and frustrated.

The simple truth is that these traditional places have a strict no-coins policy. If you’ve ever been turned away trying to cash in your leftover change, you’re not alone. It’s not a mistake on your part; it’s just a massive gap in how they operate.

High Street Banks and Post Offices

Think about your local bank or Post Office. Their whole system is built for efficiency and high-value transactions. For them, handling foreign banknotes is straightforward because notes are worth more and are easy to manage.

Coins, on the other hand, are a completely different beast. They're heavy, bulky, and each one is worth very little. The cost for a bank to sort, count, and ship them all the way back to their home country would be far more than the coins are actually worth. It’s a guaranteed money-loser for them. So, they stick to notes, leaving you wondering where can I exchange foreign coins.

This is the key difference. While convenient for notes, traditional spots can’t solve the whole problem. They leave the coin-shaped part of the puzzle completely untouched.

Airport Bureaux de Change

Those currency exchange kiosks at the airport are great for convenience, but they run on the exact same model as the banks. They’ll happily convert foreign coins and banknotes for you, but only if by “coins and banknotes” you really mean “just banknotes.”

Their business is all about fast, simple exchanges of popular currencies. The messy, expensive process of dealing with mixed bags of low-value coins from dozens of countries just doesn’t fit into that model. This is exactly why a specialised service is needed—one that’s built to handle what traditional exchanges won’t touch.

It’s worth noting that the UK's broader financial health provides a stable backdrop for all currency exchanges. As of June 2025, the UK's foreign exchange reserves stood at $249.56 billion, showing a strong ability to manage currency movements. While this stability mainly benefits banknote exchanges through potentially better rates, it also underpins the robust system that allows specialist services to effectively handle every kind of currency, including coins. You can read more about the UK's financial stability from The Global Economy.

Donating Foreign Coins to Charity

Sometimes, it’s not about finding where you can exchange foreign coins for cash, but about making a difference. If you have a small amount of leftover holiday money or simply want to support a good cause, donating your foreign coins is a fantastic and impactful option.

That forgotten jar of international change sitting on your shelf holds incredible potential. While a single coin might not seem like much, when combined with thousands of others, it becomes a powerful stream of funding for vital charitable work. It’s a simple act that creates a big collective impact.

How Your Small Change Becomes a Big Donation

Charities across the UK receive countless small donations of foreign currency, but they face the same problem as individuals—banks won't exchange the coins. This is where they partner with a specialised service like ours. We provide the fast, easy, and hassle-free solution they need to convert foreign coins and banknotes into usable funds.

We take on the entire process for them, with no need to sort the jumble of currencies.

Collection: Charities gather all the donated foreign currency, from euros to dollars and beyond.
Consolidation: We receive these large, mixed collections and handle all the sorting, counting, and processing.
Conversion: The total value is calculated and paid directly to the charity, turning otherwise useless coins into funding for their projects.

This partnership is built on trust and credibility. We are the trusted service for many major UK charities, supermarkets, and airports, helping them manage their currency collections efficiently and securely.

Making a Direct Impact

The process is remarkably easy. Instead of letting your leftover foreign currency gather dust, you can send it to us and choose to direct the funds to one of our partnered charities. It’s a 100% guaranteed way to ensure your donation reaches its destination. Our guide on where you can donate foreign coins provides more detailed information on how you can contribute.

Understanding the complexities of the UK's financial system highlights why these partnerships are so crucial. For example, the UK government's net reserves can fluctuate, with a reported decrease of $906 million in July 2025 due to various transactions. This shows the intricate management of national currency, a complexity that makes handling small-value foreign coins unfeasible for large institutions but perfect for a specialised service. You can learn more about the UK's international reserves in the official July 2025 statistical release.

Ready to turn your old coins into something meaningful? Visit our homepage to get started.

How to Exchange Your Foreign Coins Today

So, you now see why high street banks and bureaux de change fall short when it comes to old coins and notes, and how our mail-in service offers the perfect alternative. It’s time to stop letting that jar of leftover holiday money collect dust and turn it back into real cash.

We’ve designed our process to be fast, easy, and completely hassle-free.

Forget the tedious job of sorting. Just gather up all your leftover foreign currency—coins and notes, from any era—and send it over to us. We do all the hard work for you. It’s a trusted way to convert foreign coins and banknotes, backed by a 100% guarantee to give you complete peace of mind.

Your Simple Path to Getting Paid

We’re trusted by some of the biggest names around, including major UK charities, supermarkets, airports, and even police forces. They rely on us because we deliver a secure and dependable service, every single time. Ready to see for yourself just how easy it is?

The journey from a forgotten jar of coins to money in your bank account is just a few clicks away. We’ve removed all the usual hurdles to make the process as straightforward as possible.

There's no need to wonder where can I exchange foreign coins any longer. For a full breakdown of how it all works, step-by-step, have a look at our guide on how to exchange foreign currency to get started.

Don't let that hidden value go to waste. Pop over to our homepage today to begin your exchange and transform that forgotten currency into cash.

Any Questions?

It's completely normal to have a few questions, especially if you're using a mail-in service for the first time. We believe in being totally open, so here are the answers to some of the queries we hear most often.

What Happens If My Package Gets Lost?

This is a top concern for many people, and it’s why we’ve built our service to give you complete peace of mind. Every single transaction with us is 100% guaranteed. From the moment you pop your leftover currency in the post, you can relax knowing your collection is protected.

We're a trusted partner for major UK organisations, including well-known charities, supermarkets, airports, and even police forces. They all rely on our secure and credible process, and in the rare event of a postal issue, our guarantee ensures you are fully covered.

Can I Include Old or Obsolete Currency?

Absolutely. In fact, this is one of the biggest advantages of using our service. While banks and high street exchange bureaux will only take current, in-circulation banknotes, we specialise in handling what others turn away.

Feel free to send us everything, including:

Old, out-of-circulation coins and notes.
Pre-euro currencies like German Deutsche Marks or Spanish Pesetas.
Pre-decimal British and Irish coins.

There’s no need to sort through it all yourself. Just send the entire collection our way, and we’ll handle the rest. It’s the simplest way to convert foreign coins and banknotes that would otherwise just be collecting dust.

Is It Worth Sending a Small Amount?

Yes, it certainly is! You'd be surprised how quickly those small collections add up. That handful of coins from one trip, combined with a few notes from another, can often amount to a pleasant surprise.

No amount is too small for us. We know most people build up their leftover currency in small batches over time. Our system is designed to handle collections of all sizes, making sure everyone has a fast and easy way to get value back.

By pooling together thousands of these smaller collections, we create the volume needed to make the exchange process work for everyone. This is also how we help people donate foreign coins to charity, turning tiny amounts into significant contributions.

Ready to turn your forgotten currency into cash? We Buy All Currency makes it fast, easy, and completely hassle-free. Visit our homepage to get started with your exchange today.