At Aldi Stores Around The World, You Need These Different Coins To Unlock Shopping Carts

Compared to other big grocery chains in the U.S., Aldi offers quite the unique shopping experience. For one, it charges 25 cents for a shopping cart, though you do get the quarter back when you return the cart to its rightful place once you're done shopping. The practice of having to use change to access a shopping cart is pretty rare in the States, but it's actually very common in Europe, where Aldi is originally from.

Should you ever find yourself entirely out of quarters, tokens are an alternative, neat little tool that unlocks Aldi's shopping carts; some people have even tried to use coins from other currencies, but that kind of experimentation might yield inconsistent results. However, if you've caught the wanderlust bug and plan to shop at international Aldi locations, you'll definitely benefit from knowing which foreign coins to keep in your wallet. Here is a list of countries with an Aldi presence, along with the corresponding coins that unlock the cart. Surprisingly, many of them far exceed the humble quarter, so we've also noted their value in U.S. dollars, per the conversion rate of December 2025.

In the U.K., you'll need one pound sterling (£1) to unlock the shopping cart, which is equal to $1.33. That's five quarters and eight cents extra! This coin actually caused some trouble for the U.K. Aldi fans in 2017, when it got updated from a round design to a 12-sided one to prevent counterfeiting. For a while, the new coin didn't fit the shopping carts, so Aldi needed to update the mechanisms.

What can you do with a coin that depicts a kangaroo? In Australia, you can grab yourself an Aldi cart. One Australian dollar (equaling $0.67 U.S. dollars) unlocks the cart, as does the two-dollar coin, which depicts an Aboriginal tribal elder and converts to $1.33 U.S. dollars. If you can't find any change when traveling Down Under, though, Australian Aldi sells trolley tokens for $0.99 AUS dollars.

Aldi is present in 18 countries worldwide, 11 of which use the euro as their currency. The coins needed for the carts are €1 ($1.16) and €2 ($2.33), which is significantly more than a quarter, perhaps giving people some extra motivation to return the trolleys. The only exception is the city of Barcelona, where certain Aldis forgo the coin system altogether and keep all carts unlocked.

You won't be able to purchase the ingredients for the traditional 12-dish Polish Christmas Eve dinner without a cart, so make sure you have change at the ready before going to Aldi. You'll need either one or two złoty to get the cart, which is equal to $0.27 and $0.55 — much closer to the American quarter than the other countries. Don't have any change left? The store might be able to provide you with a free token instead.

Another country where Aldi's "cart fee" is fairly similar to the one in the U.S. is Hungary. The carts unlock with a 100 forint coin, which is just slightly more than a U.S. quarter, converting to $0.30. If you've spent all of your forints at the best restaurants in Budapest but still have a few euros left, however, a €1 coin will allegedly work as well.

The shopping carts are locked at most Swiss supermarkets, including at Aldi, so definitely get into the habit of keeping one or two Swiss francs (CHF) in your wallet. One CHF is $1.24, and two CHF is $2.48, the latter officially being the largest amount of money you'll be depositing into a cart. On the flip side, many Swiss stores sell the trolley tokens  — you can even get them at IKEA.

In China, Aldi first opened its doors in 2019 and has since grown into a very profitable operation, making two billion yuan in 2024. It mostly has a presence in Shanghai, though it has slowly begun to expand its reach. Unlike in Europe, where Aldi is considered anything but bougie, in China, the chain is viewed as a high-end place with European goods. But the biggest difference? Absolutely no coins are needed for the shopping carts.