The Bank of Tanzania has brought into effect two significant regulatory instruments in April 2025: the Foreign Currency Usage Regulations 2025, which reaffirm the Tanzanian Shilling as the sole primary currency for domestic transactions and restrict the use of foreign currencies in local pricing, and the Financial Consumer Complaints Guidelines 2025, which establish a structured complaints-handling process backed by substantive financial penalties for non-compliance. The simultaneous introduction of the two instruments signals the BoT's intention to tighten both its macroeconomic and consumer-protection mandates in a single regulatory push.
The foreign currency regulations are directed at what the BoT has characterised as an erosion of the Tanzanian Shilling's primacy in domestic commerce. In sectors including real estate, tourism, and segments of high-value retail trade, pricing in US dollars or other foreign currencies had become commonplace, effectively undermining the national currency's role as the standard unit of account for domestic transactions. The regulations formally prohibit the practice for entities that are not expressly authorised to transact in foreign currencies under the existing framework, asserting monetary sovereignty in a way that reflects similar efforts by central banks elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.
NEW COMPLIANCE OBLIGATIONS FOR COMMERCIAL BANKS
Commercial banks operating in Tanzania face substantive new compliance obligations under the foreign currency regulations. Institutions are required to strengthen their due diligence procedures for all foreign currency transactions, review the supporting documentation that customers present when seeking to transact in foreign exchange, and verify that pricing submitted to customers in Tanzanian Shillings meets the regulatory requirements on each transaction processed. The cumulative operational impact of those requirements falls on banks' compliance, operations, and customer service functions, which will need to be updated to reflect the new standards.
The regulations do not prohibit legitimate foreign currency activity. Cross-border trade, foreign direct investment, and international payments remain permitted within the established legal architecture. The practical effect is to raise the evidentiary and documentation bar that banks must clear before facilitating or accepting foreign currency pricing within the domestic economy, ensuring that exceptions to the Tanzanian Shilling default are genuinely grounded in the permitted categories rather than being a routine feature of commercial transactions.
CONSUMER COMPLAINTS FRAMEWORK AND DAILY FINES
Running alongside the currency regulations, the Financial Consumer Complaints Guidelines 2025 establish a formal process for the resolution of complaints brought by customers against banks and other financial service providers. The guidelines specify procedures and timelines for complaint handling and introduce a financial penalty of TSh 1 million per day — roughly equivalent to several hundred US dollars at prevailing exchange rates — for institutions that fail to comply with decisions issued by the BoT under the complaints adjudication mechanism. The daily accrual structure is designed to create a strong financial incentive for institutions to engage promptly with the regulator's findings and resolve disputes in a timely fashion.
Taken together, the two April 2025 instruments represent a broad-based tightening of the regulatory environment for banks in Tanzania. The concurrent introduction of currency use restrictions and a formal consumer complaints framework places compliance demands on institutions in both their transaction processing and their customer service operations simultaneously. Banks will need to assess their current documentation practices and complaints-handling procedures against the new standards and make operational adjustments ahead of any active enforcement activity by the BoT.