Do you sell digital services online to foreign clients? You don’t need to register each contract with your bank. A simple declaration filed with your bank before you’re paid is enough. Skip it, and your earnings arrive in dinars instead of foreign currency.
Where your money lands
What the rule says
Since Banque d’Algérie Regulation 21-01, article 57Règlement 21-01 du 28 mars 2021 modifiant le règlement 07-01 (articles 57 et 67), p. 2 of Regulation 07-01Règlement 07-01 du 3 février 2007 relatif aux règles applicables aux transactions courantes avec l'étranger et aux comptes devises (version d'origine) lets three groups skip bank domiciliation, the usual contract-by-contract registration:
- online exports of digital services;
- services sold by startups;
- service exports by professional non-traders.
Instead, you file “a declaration describing the project or projects, giving among other things the unit price and the date it goes online” with your bank. Every payment must then come home to a bank in Algeria and go into your foreign currency account, “to be used first and only for the needs of [your] activity”.
Take Karim, a motion designer in Constantine. He signs a deal with an agency in Lyon for three videos at €600 each. He declares the project at his bank branch before he sends the first invoice. The €1,800 lands in his foreign currency account, in euros.
Your options
Declare the project before the first payment
Article 57 of Regulation 07-01Règlement 21-01 du 28 mars 2021 modifiant le règlement 07-01 (articles 57 et 67), p. 2, as amended by Regulation 21-01Règlement 21-01 du 28 mars 2021 modifiant le règlement 07-01 (articles 57 et 67), sets out this route. It’s the standard route, and the only one that keeps your earnings in foreign currency.
- Cost: the rule sets no fee, so ask your bank for its price.
- Timing: the declaration must come before the payment. Once you deliver the service, your client has up to 120 days to pay (180 with export credit insurance), and the money must come home on the day they pay (guide 9).
Step by step
- Open a professional foreign currency account in your name, either a trader’s or a professional non-trader’s account (guide 6). You file the declaration with the bank that holds this account.
- Ask your branch for its declaration template. There’s no national form, and each bank has its own.
- Describe the project: the service, the client, the unit price and the date it goes online. The rule says “among other things”, so your bank can ask for more.
- File the declaration before you send the invoice, and keep a copy with the branch’s stamp.
- Give your client the details of this foreign currency account, and check each transfer arrives in foreign currency.
The rule talks about “projects” without saying whether each new job counts as one. To be safe, declare every new client and every new job before the first payment, and ask your branch how it reads the rule.
Get paid without declaring first
The same article covers this: “export earnings from projects not declared in advance to the domiciling bank will be paid in Algerian dinars.”
You haven’t broken a rule, but you lose the foreign currency. Your bank converts the money into dinars at the official rate, and you can’t use it to pay for software or costs abroad. Karim’s €1,800 would turn into dinars, and he couldn’t turn them back into euros.
Key points
- No declaration, no foreign currency: an undeclared project is paid in dinars.
- You declare before the payment, to the bank that holds your foreign currency account.
- The declaration describes the project, its unit price and the date it goes online, and your bank can ask for more.
Sources
- Regulation 21-01 of 28 March 2021 amending Regulation 07-01, Banque d’Algérie: art. 2, new article 57, p. 2; art. 5, new article 67, p. 2, original text read on 18 October 2026.
- Regulation 26-02 of 23 July 2026, Banque d’Algérie, art. 2 rewriting article 61 of Regulation 07-01: Official Journal no. 58 of 12 August 2026, p. 28, read on 21 October 2026.