Foreign household deposits in Cypriot banks have all but disappeared, standing at 269.5 million euros in September 2026, around 90 per cent below their pre-crisis heyday, according to the latest Central Bank of Cyprus (CBC) data.
Cyprus’s banking system today bears no resemblance to that of the previous decade. The Cyprus of contrived abundance, unchecked non-EU capital and Russian oligarchs has given way to a banking model fully aligned with European rules. The system is safer and cleaner than ever, but it has paid the price of losing the foreign billions that once drove it.
Domestic money has now replaced those billions. Total deposits rose by 697.1 million euros in September 2026, bringing the overall balance to 60.2 billion euros, according to the CBC. Residents of Cyprus accounted for 639.9 million euros of the inflows, led by domestic businesses with 373.0 million euros, while domestic households added 93.8 million euros. Banks now rely on the liquidity of domestic households and businesses.
Foreign company deposits have stabilised at 2,890.7 million euros, but they now belong to institutional investment bodies and holding companies subject to exhaustive checks.
The currency shift
The breakdown of deposits by currency shows how sharply Cyprus has turned, both geopolitically and economically. Before the crisis, the US dollar was the main tool of foreign offshore companies and accounted for the lion’s share of foreign funds.
In October 2012, deposits in currencies other than the euro reached 4,136 million euros in euro terms, of which 3,918 million were in dollars. Following pressure from the United States and the deposit ‘haircut’, dollar deposits almost halved, to 2,074 million euros by June 2013. As anti-money laundering (AML) checks tightened, they fell further, to 1,148 million euros by December 2014. They now stand at 1,433 million euros.
The euro’s dominance is now total. Sterling deposits have fallen from 107.9 million euros in 2013 to 43.6 million. The Swiss franc and the Japanese yen were never main transaction currencies like the dollar, but their decline shows how completely Cyprus has moved away from traditional investment currencies. Swiss franc deposits stand at 71.7 million euros, and yen deposits at just 3.1 million.
