Currency Exchange & Payments

⚠️The Iran-Specific Challenge: Moving Money Under Sanctions

This is a gap most general Romania guides miss, but it matters in practice for Iranian nationals. Iran's banking system has been disconnected from SWIFT since November 2018, and on September 29, 2025 the EU fully reimposed financial sanctions on Iranian banking institutions after the UN Security Council's "snapback" mechanism was triggered (EU Regulation 2025/1975). These measures mainly target Iranian banks and institutions, not individual Iranian nationals resident in the EU personally — personal remittances under roughly €10,000 are generally exempt. In practice, however, this means popular transfer services like Western Union, Wise, and Remitly cannot process direct transfers to/from Iran (they operate under US regulation and lack an OFAC export license); the common workaround is routing through an account or exchange bureau in a third country such as Turkey or the UAE.

Also worth knowing: Iranian "hawala-style" exchange bureaus operating in cities like London, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Stockholm, and Oslo move funds by matching buy/sell orders between two parties (without money physically crossing the border) — as of this writing we could not find a documented example of this kind of service in Romania itself; if you need it, the nearest known hubs are Germany, the UK, and the Nordic countries. Be cautious about crypto (e.g. USDT) as a workaround too: in August 2026, the US Treasury (OFAC) sanctioned two Iran-linked exchanges (Shelbit and Aban Tether) over transactions with Iranian domestic exchanges (Nobitex, Wallex, Bitpin, Ramzinex), and in July 2026 Tether froze roughly $131 million in USDT linked to Iran's central bank. The practical effect: USDT with a transaction history tracing to an Iranian exchange can be frozen or rejected at the receiving exchange even if you personally are not sanctioned — this guide deliberately does not recommend a specific platform, since the rules here are shifting quickly.