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I've been in Mongolia over three weeks but only needed to go to the ATM once previously and the first one I tried worked.

But just now I went out at about 11pm to withdraw money. Some ATMs didn't feel secure enough or were too secluded to use so late at night with so few people around. None of the ATMs I spotted had Cirrus logos. I went to a Xaan Bank that had a security guard and the ATM had several logos but no Cirrus logo.

It only offered me a choice of account and then declined my withdrawal on the basis that it was "not a current account". Then again as an IT guy I've come to the conclusion that ATM error messages are as useless as error messages anywhere else in the computer realm.

One thing I'm always concerned about is that my card is a Visa credit card as well but withdrawing from the Visa part of the card is considerably more expensive because they are classified as cash advances and incur the highest credit card interest rate. That's on top of any other ATM fees.

So how can I know which Mongolian banks or which particular ATMs will accept my card and withdraw from my savings account via Cirrus and not as a cash advance via Visa?

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MasterCard website (the owner of Cirrus) has an ATM locator service. Select the country and the city (an optional street name field also available) and you will get all ATMs in that area. If an ATM is listed, it is supposed to accept Cirrus cards as the title of the page indicates.

MasterCard ATM locator service

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    I meant to mention that I didn't trust this service. Every time I try to look for anything specifically about Cirrus it redirects me to stuff about MasterCard and in the past I have found many machines in various countries with MasterCard logos which refused my Cirrus cards.
    – hippietrail
    Dec 23, 2013 at 2:24
  • I went to many banks again the next day before I found one that worked, for multiple reasons. The one that worked did have a Cirrus logo and I think it was a "Xac" Bank, which would make it the same bank I used the first time.
    – hippietrail
    Dec 25, 2013 at 13:51

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