Carrying large amount of cash is not necessary when arriving in Poland. Every restaurant, hotel, shop will accept credit card and there is also dense network of ATM’s which are connected to all networks like Plus. You can also without trouble exchange any currency in exchange boots which are located in Sopot in the vicinity of the railway station. There also banks located in various places in Sopot. You will find most banks in the center on the main street where you can use your visa card to get same cash or use money machines.

Discussion on the need for ordering monetary and Treasury issues and establishing a national bank started in Poland in the second half of the 18th century. However, the fall of the state at the end of that century left it groundless. The idea of establishing an issuing bank came back in the period of the Kingdom of Poland after the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna. On 29 January 1828 a royal decree of Tsar Nicolai I, establishing the Bank of Poland (Bank Polski), was issued. The mint was subordinated to the Bank and the first notes of the Bank of Poland came into circulation in 1830.

The outbreak of the November Uprising and subsequent defeat in the war with Russia changed the political situation and brought on end to the Kingdom's autonomy. This also meant the gradual depriving of the Bank of Poland of central bank attributes. In 1832 it was deprived of its mint.

In 1842 rubles and kopecks were put into circulation (apart from the zloty) and the notes of the Bank were additionally given captions in Russian. The Russian State Bank was established in 1860 and ten years later the Bank of Poland was deprived of the right of issue. In 1885 it was transformed into a counter of the Russian State Bank. After the outbreak of World War I, the Kingdom of Poland was occupied by Germans and Austrians. The ordinance of the German general-governor of 9 December 1916 established the Polish National Loan Office, a new issuing institution. The Polish mark was the currency issued.

A necessity to again establish the central bank of a state arose with the re-establishment of an independent Poland in November 1918. The decree of the Head of State, providing the legal grounds for the continued operation of the Polish National Loan Office as the issuing bank until such time as a new issuing institution - Bank Polski (the Bank of Poland) was set up, was published on 7 December 1918. The Polish mark became a legal tender into which currencies of annexing states were exchanged. On 28 February 1919, in accordance with the law, the future Polish monetary unit was named the zloty. The idea of establishing Bank Polski SA as the state issuing institution was presented at the forum of the Parliament in May 1919. The issue was readdressed several times, but the solution was only to come in 1924. The "Act on the State Treasury repair and currency reform" was passed on 11 January 1924, stipulating inter alia the introducing of a new monetary system based "on gold" and establishing the issuing bank pursuant to a special statute as a joint-stock bank with a contribution of the state. Bank Polski SA started its operations on 28 April 1924. In September 1939, the bank's authorities evacuated to Rumania, from there to France and next to London. The London period lasted until the beginning of 1946, when the Bank's management with its assets returned to the country (from a formal point of view Bank Polski SA was liquidated on 7 January 1952). During World War II the occupation authorities in the Polish territories annexed by Germany and the USSR introduced their own currency. In the part of Poland occupied by the Germans, called the General Governorate, the Issuing Bank in Poland was set up in December 1939. It started operations in April 1940, putting into circulation a zloty, the so-called Cracow zloty, that was to replace the notes of Bank Polski. Apart from issuing activities, that Bank also engaged in normal banking operations.

In 1944, the territories liberated from the German occupation by the Red Army the Polski Komitet Wyzwolenia Narodowego (PKWN, Polish National Liberation Committee), being under Moscow's influence, intend to establish an issuing institution of its own, independent of Bank Polski SA, and linked with the government of the Republic of Poland in London. The PKWN was soon transformed into the Provisional Government of the RP with its seat in Lublin. This government established, by the decree of 15 January 1945, the state bank - Narodowy Bank Polski (the National Bank of Poland), furnishing it with a monopoly as regards the issue of a new currency - the zloty.

From the time of its establishment, the Bank was dependent on the Ministry of Finance, the government and a decision centre, in the form of the management of the communist party. It was headed by a president appointed by the state authorities.

The NBP played a great role in the process of the economic reconstruction of the state and the integration of the Western lands. In the initial period, its task entailed regulation of the issue and release of credits for the reconstruction of the economy.

After 1946, it commenced with direct financing of industry on an increasingly broad scale, in line with state economic-financial plans. In the following years it became a financial centre, defining the operations of the entire lending system on the basis of credit planning, derived from material planning.

The years 1946-1947 saw it operate in a multi-sector economy, in a transitional system between a market and a planned economy. The change of the economic system post 1948 implied changing the NBP's role, it being transformed into a bank servicing a centrally-managed economy. It operated in this form for almost 40 years, until the start of the political and economic transformation of the years 1989-1990.

The building of the foundations of a market economy in Poland began in 1989. In such an economy, the role of money, and of the banking system, differs substantially from that in the centrally-planned economic system. Money plays an active role; and material decisions are usually derived from the financial standing of entities. The structure of the banking system is also different. At the end of the 1980s, construction of a so-called two-tier banking system began in Poland, in that there was to be - on the one hand - a central bank, and on the other hand - a network of commercial banks. (Laws introducing a two-tier banking system came into force at the beginning of 1989.) In such a system, typical for market economies, the central bank is the entity that regulates the circulation of money, ensures stability of the financial system and provides services allowing for the efficient operation of banks. Hence the central bank serves macroeconomic and systemic functions, though, it does not participate in the direct providing of services to non-financial entities. The latter are dealt with by commercial banks.

Starting on 1 January 1995, the National Bank of Poland performed a revaluation of zloty, which, via its anti-inflation effect, allowed for a restoring of the purchasing power of the zloty, allowed for a reduction in the volume of money in circulation and contributed to making cash circulation and settlements more efficient.

The Act on the revaluation of the currency of 7 July 1994 put into circulation a new Polish monetary unit, named the zloty, being exchanged for the old zloty at the ratio 1:10,000. It stipulated a two-year period of parallel circulation of the old and new currency. The old zloty (apart from notes withdrawn from circulation before 1 January 1995) continued to be legal tender until the end of 1996. As of 1 January 1997 they ceased to be legal tender. However, until the end of 2010 they will be exchangeable in establishments of the National Bank of Poland and in other banks obliged to perform this operation by the President of the NBP.