Before you start

Carte de résident or its receipt, and passport
Employment contract stating the transferable share of salary
Proof of address
A clear understanding, before signing, of what proportion of your pay can leave the country

Step-by-step

1
Fix the transferable share in the contract before you sign
Transfers abroad of salary earned in Algeria by foreign workers run under Banque d'Algérie instruction, with the pay decomposed into a transferable portion and a dinar portion determined contractually between employer and employee. Whatever you agree is the ceiling on what can ever leave. Negotiate it as hard as the gross figure.
Via employerWho: YouBefore signing
2
Open the account your employer's payroll actually works with
Foreign-bank subsidiaries in Algiers — Société Générale Algérie, BNP Paribas El Djazaïr, Natixis Algérie among them — are generally more practised at expatriate salary and transfer arrangements than the large state banks. Ask payroll which institution the transferable portion is routed through.
Via employerWho: You
3
Keep every exchange and transfer document
Exchange control runs on documentary justification. Bank advices, exchange receipts and customs currency declarations are what support any later transfer. Treat them as financial instruments rather than paperwork.
In personWho: You
4
Declare foreign currency you bring in
Currency brought into the country should be declared to customs at the threshold in force. That declaration supports taking it out again. Ask the bank or customs for the current threshold rather than relying on a figure from an article.
In personWho: YouOn arrival
5
Budget at the official rate, not at a rate you have read about
The Banque d'Algérie sets the official rate and that is the rate your salary converts at through the banking system. The parallel market trades materially weaker. Building a cost-of-living model on an unofficial rate you cannot legally access produces a budget that does not survive the first month.
OnlineWho: You
6
Understand what the parallel market is, and that it is illegal
A large informal foreign-exchange market exists in Algiers — the Square Port-Saïd is its best-known location — driven by demand for currency exceeding the official allocation. It is not a grey area: transacting outside the authorised channels is an offence under Algerian exchange-control law. We note it because you will hear about it constantly, not as a recommendation.
In personWho: You

Documents you’ll need

Passport and carte de résident
Employment contract stating the salary split
Bank advices and exchange receipts
Customs currency declaration from entry
Proof of address

Things most newcomers don’t know

The transferable share of your salary is a contract term, and it is the most important one you will negotiate.

Under the Banque d'Algérie framework, salary earned in Algeria by a foreign worker is transferred abroad only to the extent the contract splits it into a transferable portion, with the balance payable in dinars. That split is agreed between employer and employee. Candidates negotiate the gross figure and accept the split as boilerplate — and then discover that a large part of a well-paid package is money that can only be spent inside a country they are leaving in two years.

Source: Banque d'Algérie, instruction n° 02-98

The gap between the official and parallel rates is large, and only one of them is available to you.

Demand for foreign currency in Algeria substantially exceeds what the official system allocates, and an informal market has existed for decades — trading at a materially weaker dinar rate than the Banque d'Algérie's. Transacting there is illegal. The honest planning consequence is not that you should use it, but that your legally-converted salary buys less than newcomers expect, and that Algerian colleagues' spending patterns may reflect a rate you cannot access.

Source: Banque d'Algérie; press reporting

Dinars you cannot spend are dinars you cannot recover.

There is no free market in the dinar abroad and no general right to convert an accumulated balance and take it out. Combined with a rental market that often wants a year's rent in advance, this argues for keeping only working balances in dinars and for treating the transferable portion as the part of your compensation that is genuinely yours to keep.

Source: Banque d'Algérie

Foreign-bank subsidiaries are the practical choice, and payroll will tell you which one.

The foreign banks operating in Algeria deal with expatriate salary splits and transfer files routinely, and their staff know the documentary requirements. The large state banks serve a domestic market and the process is correspondingly less familiar. Rather than choosing a bank on branch convenience, ask your employer's payroll which institution their transfers actually go through and open there.

Source: community-reported

Common mistakes to avoid

Accepting the contractual salary split as boilerplate rather than negotiating it.
Budgeting at a parallel-market rate you cannot legally access.
Accumulating a dinar balance you will not be able to convert or remove.
Skipping the customs currency declaration on entry.
Choosing a bank on convenience rather than on which one payroll routes transfers through.

Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.