Best Way To Spend Your Ringgit During Umrah

The Short Answer, Before the Detail

If you are flying to Makkah in the next few months and you want to know which app to put your spending money on, here is the answer up front.

Carry two cards from two different providers, and a small amount of Saudi Riyal in cash. Use one card as your main way to pay. Keep the second one in your hotel safe, untouched, in case the first is lost, frozen, or simply declined at a counter. Change a few hundred ringgit into cash before you fly, for the handful of situations where no card will help you.

That is the whole recommendation. The reason behind it matters more, because the reason is what tells you when to break the rule.

Most articles on this subject ask "which app gives the best exchange rate for Saudi Riyal?" That is the wrong question. None of these apps sells you riyal in advance, so there is no rate to shop for ahead of time. Asking it anyway is what leads people to land in Jeddah having optimised a number that does not exist, holding a payment method that does not work where they need it.

What Actually Happens When You Tap Your Card in Makkah

When you buy a bottle of water in Makkah for 3 Saudi Riyal, four things happen in the space of about two seconds. Every cost in this article hides inside one of them.

One. The shop's card machine sends a request for 3 Saudi Riyal. The Saudi Riyal, written as SAR or sometimes SR, is Saudi Arabia's currency, in the same way the ringgit is Malaysia's. The shop asks for riyal because that is the only currency it deals in.

Two. That request travels through a card network. A card network is the plumbing that connects a shop's machine to your bank or app, and the two big ones are Visa and Mastercard. Their logos on your card are what tell a shop in Makkah that your Malaysian card can talk to their machine at all.

Three. Somewhere in that chain, your ringgit is converted into riyal. This is the step that costs you money, and it is the step nobody sees.

Four. The ringgit equivalent is deducted from your app balance, and you get a notification.

The cost of step three has two separate parts, and keeping them separate is the single most useful thing in this article.

The first part is the exchange rate used. An exchange rate is simply how much of one currency you get for another. The fairest available rate is called the mid-market rate, which is the midpoint between what buyers are paying and what sellers are asking at that moment. It is the rate you see if you type "MYR to SAR" into Google. Almost nobody actually gives you that rate. What you usually get is a slightly worse one, and the gap between the two is called an FX markup, where FX is short for foreign exchange. A markup is a hidden cost, because it does not appear as a line item anywhere. It is just baked into a rate that looks fine until you compare it.

The second part is the conversion fee, which is a stated percentage charged on top, usually somewhere between nothing and 1%. Unlike a markup, a fee is visible.

So when you compare these three apps, you are comparing two things at once: what rate they hand you, and what they charge on top of it. An app can be excellent on one and mediocre on the other.

Why You Cannot Buy Saudi Riyal in Advance on Any of These Three Apps

Many Malaysians assume a travel app works like a money changer. You watch the rate, you see the ringgit doing well against the riyal one Tuesday morning, you buy 5,000 riyal at that good rate, you hold it in the app, and you spend it later at the rate you locked in. Buy low, spend later, feel clever.

That is called holding a currency, and it is a real feature. It is how these apps work for Japanese Yen, Singapore Dollars, British Pounds and a few dozen others. You open a balance in that currency, convert into it whenever you like, and the money sits there as yen or pounds until you spend it.

Saudi Riyal is a different situation, and this is the part worth understanding before you fly.

With all three of the apps in this article, what you are actually doing is converting at the moment you spend. Your money sits in your account as ringgit right up until the second you tap. The conversion happens then, at whatever rate applies then. Touch 'n Go states this plainly about its travel card: when used overseas, the card automatically converts foreign currency transactions into ringgit at Visa's prevailing exchange rate at the time the transaction is processed, and Touch 'n Go Digital does not set or maintain its own foreign exchange rates.

What this means for you, practically:

• You cannot lock in a good rate ahead of time by watching the market.
• Timing your top-up does not help. Topping up your app with RM5,000 today does not buy you riyal today. It just puts RM5,000 of ringgit in an app.
• The rate you get is the rate on the day you buy the dates, not the day you loaded the app.

None of this is a reason to avoid these apps. It just moves the question. Since none of them sells you riyal in advance, what you are choosing between is how much each one takes as it converts, and how reliably it works when you are standing at a counter with a queue behind you.

Wise: Strong Rates, No Riyal Balance

Wise is a money transfer company that also issues a card. It prices differently from the other two, and the difference is structural rather than a matter of who is currently cheaper.

Can you get it in Malaysia? Yes. Wise's own help pages confirm that the Wise card is available to personal customers who live in Malaysia, alongside Australia, Japan, Singapore, the Philippines, the UK and others. Note the wording: personal customers. Business customers in Malaysia currently cannot get the card.

What does it cost to get? Wise Malaysia's pricing page lists a one-time card order fee of RM13.70, with no subscription fee, and a free digital card you can use online before the physical card arrives.

What does it cost to spend? Wise's stated position for Malaysian residents is that you spend at the mid-market rate with no markups or margins, and no foreign transaction fee just for using the card abroad, with low conversion fees instead. Stripped of the marketing language, that means one visible charge rather than two hidden ones: you get the fair rate, and you pay a stated conversion fee on top.

What Wise does not publish is the size of that fee for ringgit to riyal specifically. The percentage varies by currency pair and is generated when you request the conversion, so the only way to know your number is to open the app, enter the amount, and read the fee before confirming. Do that before you fly rather than at a shop counter, because it is the one figure that determines whether Wise is cheaper than the alternatives for your trip.

Cash withdrawals are where the detail matters. Wise Malaysia's published card fees are two free ATM withdrawals each month as long as you do not withdraw more than RM1,000 in total, then 1.75% on any amount above RM1,000, and RM5 per withdrawal from the third withdrawal onwards. Read that twice, because it is a fee structure that punishes a specific pattern: many small withdrawals. If you are going to take out cash, take it out in fewer, larger amounts.

The catch. Wise says you can keep 40+ currencies in your account and convert between any of them at the mid-market rate, but it does not publish the full list of those currencies on that page, so check inside the app whether a Saudi Riyal balance can be opened before you rely on being able to hold one. What is clear is that Wise does support Saudi Riyal as a destination for money transfers, and it pays the recipient in SAR from a local Wise bank account when you send money to Saudi Arabia.

Touch 'n Go eWallet: The Card Travels, the QR May Not

Touch 'n Go is two different payment methods sharing one app, and outside Malaysia they behave nothing alike. Confusing them is the most expensive mistake in this article.

Method one is the QR payment, the scan-and-pay you already use at every mamak and petrol station. Overseas, this runs on a partner network called Alipay+, which is a cross-border system that lets a Malaysian wallet pay a foreign shop. It only works in countries where that network has been switched on.

Since 25 April 2024, a 1% overseas transaction conversion fee has been built into the daily exchange rate shown in the app when you pay by overseas QR. Touch 'n Go's own explanation is that the fee is incorporated into the exchange rate rather than charged separately, so the amount you see in the app before confirming is the amount you pay.

Now the important part. Touch 'n Go's own overseas QR page advertises acceptance in over 50 countries, and names eight of them: mainland China, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong and Macau. Saudi Arabia is not among the named markets, and no Middle Eastern country is.

Do not fly to Jeddah assuming scan-and-pay will work. Check inside the app, on the day, before you leave. It costs you thirty seconds and it is the difference between a working payment method and a dead one.

Method two is the Touch 'n Go Visa card, a physical card linked to your eWallet balance. This runs on the Visa network, which does work in Saudi Arabia. Touch 'n Go's help centre states that spending in Malaysia is free apart from withdrawals, ATM withdrawals cost RM1.50 locally and RM10.00 overseas, and refers users to the Visa card's Product Disclosure Sheet for the full detail.

What the fees actually are. Touch 'n Go publishes a Product Disclosure Sheet for this card, the short standardised document every Malaysian financial provider must give you listing the real fees, and it is the version that counts if you ever dispute a charge. The current sheet, version 6, dated 22 May 2026, lists two card types, an Everyday Card and a Travel Card, which is why you may have seen conflicting figures quoted elsewhere.

For both cards, the sheet states that the cross-border transaction fee is waived until further notice. Read that phrase carefully, because it is not the same as no fee. A waiver is a decision the company can reverse, and the sheet notes that terms are subject to change with 21 days' notice given through the app or website. Today the card converts without a stated conversion fee. That is genuinely good, and it is not a permanent feature of the product.

The rest of the published costs: the application fee is RM15 for the Everyday Card and RM20 for the Travel Card, both including RM5 delivery, with an annual fee of RM8 waived for the first year, domestic ATM withdrawals at RM1.50 and cross-border ATM withdrawals at RM10.00.

That RM8 annual fee is worth pausing on if you are ordering a card specifically for this trip. It is waived for your first year, so your Umrah costs you nothing in annual fees. It arrives the year after, on a card you may never use again. Neither of the other two apps in this article charges an annual fee at all.

BigPay: Built for Travel, Priced Accordingly

BigPay is a Malaysian app with a prepaid Visa card. Prepaid means you load money onto it first and spend only what you have loaded, in the same way you top up a Touch 'n Go card for the toll. It cannot go into debt, which for a pilgrimage budget is a feature rather than a limitation.

Does it work in Saudi Arabia? Yes, and BigPay has said so directly. Its own guidance for pilgrims states that with the BigPay card there is no need to visit money changers to convert ringgit to riyal, and that transactions automatically pay in Saudi Riyal at the exchange rate at the time of purchase, covering accommodation, dates, souvenirs and meals.

What does it cost to spend? BigPay's support pages state that it charges currency conversion fees of up to 1% on foreign transactions made with the BigPay Visa card, applying to any physical or online transaction in a currency other than ringgit. Published fee schedules put the figure at 1.00% of the total amount transacted, with no issuance fee, no annual fee, and a card replacement fee of RM20. BigPay also notes that the network charge is part of the foreign transaction fee charged by Visa itself, applies to all non-ringgit transactions regardless of card type, and is already included in the rate shown on Visa's portal.

There is a second fee that only bites if you make a specific mistake. BigPay applies an additional 0.5% cross-border fee on transactions with overseas merchants that are charged in Malaysian ringgit, on top of existing network charges, usually totalling around 1.5%. Read that carefully, because it describes exactly what happens when a shop in Makkah offers to bill you in ringgit instead of riyal. On this card, accepting that offer costs you a worse exchange rate and an extra half a percent. The next section explains why that offer keeps appearing.

That last point applies to all three apps, not just BigPay. Every card that runs on Visa carries Visa's own network charge somewhere in the price.

Cash withdrawals. BigPay states that withdrawals cost RM6 in Malaysia and RM10 abroad, that you do not need to notify BigPay before using the card overseas, and that some ATMs add their own charge on top. It also caps withdrawals at RM10,000 or ten successful ATM withdrawals, whichever you reach first.

One piece of advice buried in BigPay's own guidance is worth pulling out, because it applies to every card in this article and it will save you money at an ATM in Makkah: whenever the machine asks whether you want to be charged in local currency or in Malaysian ringgit, always choose the local currency, so that your provider converts your money rather than the ATM operator.

That choice has a name. It is called dynamic currency conversion, and it is the most common way travellers lose money without noticing. The machine offers to show you the price in ringgit, which sounds like a courtesy. What you are actually agreeing to is letting the terminal or ATM operator set the exchange rate instead of your card provider, and that rate is worse. Decline it. Pay in riyal.

The Three Side by Side

	Wise	Touch 'n Go eWallet	BigPay
Card network	Visa or Mastercard	Visa	Visa
Works in Saudi Arabia	Yes, by card	Yes, by card. QR not listed for Saudi Arabia	Yes, by card
Can you hold riyal in advance	Not listed among published balance currencies	No	No
How conversion happens	At the point of sale, from your held balance	At the point of sale, at Visa's prevailing rate	At the point of sale, at Visa's rate
Transaction fee	None stated for card spending abroad	Cross-border transaction fee waived until further notice. 1% on overseas QR payments	1.00% of the total amount transacted, on non-ringgit transactions
Conversion (FX) fee	Mid-market rate with a conversion fee that varies by currency pair, shown before you confirm. No fixed percentage published for MYR to SAR	No markup stated while the waiver holds. QR conversion fee of 1% is built into the displayed rate	Included in the 1.00% above
Card network charge	Not separately disclosed	Not separately disclosed	Not separately disclosed as a percentage. BigPay states its 0.5% cross-border fee is charged on top of existing network charges and that the total usually comes to around 1.5%
Cash withdrawal at ATM	2 free per month up to RM1,000 total, then 1.75% above RM1,000 and RM5 per withdrawal after the second	RM1.50 domestic, RM10.00 cross-border	RM6 domestic, RM10 overseas
Card order cost	RM13.70	RM15 Everyday Card, RM20 Travel Card, each including RM5 delivery	Free. Issuance fee is RM0
Annual fee	None	RM8, waived for the first year	RM0, free for life
Card replacement	Not published here	RM15 Everyday, RM20 Travel	RM20
Other charges to watch	Withdrawal fee structure penalises many small withdrawals	Waiver is revocable on 21 days' notice	0.5% cross-border fee if a foreign merchant charges you in ringgit. Monthly inactivity fee on dormant accounts
Main thing that breaks	Fee structure penalises many small ATM withdrawals	QR payment may not work at all in Saudi Arabia	Withdrawal caps at RM10,000 or ten withdrawals daily

Three notes on reading this table, because the fee structures are not directly comparable.

"Not separately disclosed" is the honest answer on card network charges, not an omission. Visa applies its own charge on cross-border transactions, but it is levied on the card issuer rather than itemised to you, and none of the three publishes it as a consumer-facing percentage. BigPay comes closest to putting a number on it: it states that its 0.5% cross-border fee is charged in addition to any existing network charges, and that in most cases this will usually total to around 1.5%. Working backwards from that, the network component is in the region of 1%. Treat that as an inference from BigPay's own arithmetic, not a published Visa figure.

BigPay's 0.5% cross-border fee is a trap worth naming. It applies to transactions with a foreign merchant that are charged in ringgit, which is exactly what happens if you accept dynamic currency conversion at a terminal in Makkah. Choosing "charge me in ringgit" does not just get you a worse exchange rate. On this card it also adds a fee that you would not otherwise pay. This is the clearest illustration of why the advice earlier in this article is to always pay in riyal.

A waiver is not a price. Touch 'n Go's card currently converts without a stated cross-border fee, which on paper makes it the cheapest of the three for card spending. That advantage exists only for as long as the waiver does, and the Product Disclosure Sheet allows terms to change on 21 days' notice. Wise's fee is smaller in some pairs and larger in others but is a published, structural part of the product. Which of those you prefer depends on whether you are spending next month or next year.

Is Converting Money This Way Permissible?

Exchanging one currency for another has a specific name in Islamic law: sarf. It is treated more carefully than an ordinary sale, because currency exchange has historically been one of the easier places for riba to enter a transaction quietly. Riba means interest or unjust gain: the extra that one side collects for nothing more than the passage of time, as when a lender demands RM110 back for RM100 lent.

Classical scholarship sets a condition for sarf that has no equivalent in an ordinary purchase: both sides must take possession within the same sitting. In the classical framing, both parties must take possession of the exchanged currencies in the same sitting session. The picture to hold in your head is a money changer's counter in KLIA. You hand over ringgit, he hands over riyal, both movements happen in front of each other, and nobody walks away owed anything. That immediacy is the point.

The International Islamic Fiqh Academy has stated the negative form of the rule directly: it is not permissible to sell currencies by deferred sale, nor to set a date for the exchange of their price.

So the question a careful reader will ask about a card payment is reasonable. If you tap a card in Makkah and the conversion is processed later that day, and the merchant is paid the day after that, has anyone taken possession in the same sitting?

The concept that scholarly bodies apply here is constructive possession, known as qabd hukmi: the idea that possession can be established by control over funds rather than by physically holding notes, so an electronic transfer that is irrevocable and immediately available can satisfy the requirement even though no cash changed hands. This is why bank transfers and card payments have generally been treated as workable rather than automatically problematic. AAOIFI, the standard-setting body for Islamic finance, addresses payment cards in its Shariah Standard No. 2, and the State Bank of Pakistan's adopted version of that standard notes that in the case of a debit or charge card, it is also permissible to purchase gold, silver and foreign currency.

Two things follow from this, and both are practical rather than theoretical.

First, the type of card matters more than the app does. A prepaid or debit card spends money you already have. A credit card spends money the bank lends you, and a conventional credit card carries interest if you do not settle in full, along with charges on cash advances. That is a different transaction with a different set of questions attached, regardless of which app is involved.

Second, and this is the honest part: this article is not a fatwa and cannot be one. What is written above describes a framework and cites the bodies that have addressed it. It does not tell you the ruling for your specific card, your specific arrangement, or your specific school of thought. If this question matters to you, and for many people preparing for Umrah it will, take it to a qualified scholar or to the Shariah advisory function of the institution issuing your card. That is the right place for the answer, and it is not here.

How Much Cash You Still Need, and Where Cards Fail

Malaysians often picture Saudi Arabia as a cash economy. That picture is out of date.

The Saudi Central Bank reported that electronic payments made up 85% of total retail payments in the country in 2025, up from 79% in 2024, with electronic transactions reaching 14.6 billion. Cards work in the vast majority of places you will shop.

But averages describe a country, not a pilgrimage. The specific things a pilgrim spends money on skew heavily toward the remaining 15%, and it is worth being concrete about what those are:

• Scooter or wheelchair hire for tawaf and sa'i, if you are travelling with elderly parents or anyone who cannot walk the full circuit. Tawaf is the seven circuits around the Kaabah, the cube-shaped structure at the centre of Masjid al-Haram toward which Muslims face in prayer. Sa'i is the walk seven times between Safa and Marwah, the two small hills within the mosque.
• The barber for tahallul, the shaving or trimming of the hair at the end of your Umrah that releases you from ihram, the state of consecration you entered before arriving, along with its restrictions on clothing and conduct.
• Small stalls and street vendors around the Haram, the sacred precinct surrounding the Kaabah, selling dates, prayer mats, tasbih (prayer beads) and gifts to bring home.
• Porters and helpers at the airport and hotels.
• Sadaqah, voluntary charity, which almost nobody puts in a budget and almost everybody gives.

None of these takes a card reliably. All of them take riyal.

The practical rule: budget cash for the small and the human, and card for everything with a counter and a receipt.

Where to Change Your Cash, and Where Not To

Three options, in descending order of sense.

A money changer in Malaysia, before you fly. Usually the best rate, and it lets you compare calmly rather than under pressure. Bring your passport, since larger amounts require identification.

The airport, on either end. Convenient, and reliably the worst rate on this list. Airport counters price for a captive market, and by the time you reach one you have no realistic way to compare. Use it for a small amount if you have run out of time, not for the bulk of your money.

In Saudi Arabia. Money changers around the Haram exist and are used constantly, but you will be comparing rates in an unfamiliar currency, in a crowd, possibly jetlagged, in a language you may not read. Treat it as a backup, not a plan.

There is a fourth option people forget: withdraw riyal from an ATM using your card. Given the withdrawal fees quoted above, this is worth it for one larger withdrawal and rarely worth it for several small ones.

The Mix That Works for Most First-Time Pilgrims

Three common situations.

You booked a package and most costs are prepaid. Your remaining spending is food, gifts and incidentals. Use one card for everything, keep a modest amount of cash for stalls and sadaqah, and leave a second card in the safe. You will barely touch the second card, which is exactly the point of it.

You are travelling independently. More of your spending is large and card-friendly, including hotels and transport, so the conversion cost on the card you use most matters more. Choose on stated fees rather than on brand familiarity, and take out cash in fewer, larger ATM withdrawals.

You are travelling with elderly parents. Your cash requirement is meaningfully higher than the other two profiles, because scooter hire, wheelchair assistance and helpers are all cash and all recurring. Plan for more cash than you think, and hold a card each rather than pooling everything on one person's app.

In all three cases the second card is the part people skip and the part that saves the trip. Cards get frozen by fraud systems for looking unusual, and a Malaysian card suddenly transacting in Makkah looks unusual. One card is not a plan.

Before You Fly

• Order your card early. It arrives by post and you do not want it in transit while you are.
• Activate it and make one transaction in Malaysia first, so you know it works and your PIN is set.
• Check inside your app, on the week you travel, whether QR payment is supported in Saudi Arabia.
• Note your app's in-app support channel and how to freeze the card, before you need either.
• Change some cash in Malaysia. Not all of it.
• At every terminal and ATM in Saudi Arabia, choose to pay in Saudi Riyal, never in ringgit.
• Tell one family member at home which cards you carry.

The goal is not to squeeze the last few ringgit out of an exchange rate. It is to arrive with your money arranged well enough that you never have to think about it again, and can spend the trip on what you actually came for.