Experience written by a customer ofByblos Bank

If you search on the internet for the top banks of Lebanon, you will find that Byblos bank is one of the top banks in Lebanon. If you search for Byblos Bank, you will see that is It is the country’s third largest bank by assets. And you will find that is one of the Alpha Banks in Lebanon.

Warning: Been the one of the largest bank by assets, or one of the top banks in a country is not important. What it is important is that if you put money in a bank, you must be able to withdraw it once you need it.

Read below about the experiences i had with Byblos bank , and of course you will think 100 times before opening any kind of accounts with that bank

In 2019, Byblos bank used to offer interest rate per person. Meaning: that if 2 persons have the same amount of money in the same type of account, the branch manager might give an interest rate much higher for one person than the other person. And then if you try to pull the money, they propose to you an increase in the rate of interest.

In july 2022, Byblos bank proposed for me to pull the money this way:

They give me 300$ but they remove my checking account 900$. It was their only proposal to let me withdraw money from my checking account.

From 2019 until now, There was and there is no official capital control set by the Lebanese official authorities. I wanted to pull money from the bank in order to travel, all what they gave me 500USD from my account while i was having over 75K in my checking account.

In 2020, I got a refund of 1000 USD on my Byblos bank web card (something similar to credit card) from a company outside Lebanon. I transferred this money back to my Checking account, they didn't allow me to get the money from the checking account, saying that it is not fresh money (means it didn't come from external source), however it came from external source, but Byblos bank want to catch money as possible as they can.