Argentine Peso (ARS)

About the Argentine Peso

The Argentine Peso (ARS) is the official currency of Argentina, written with the $ sign and divided into 100 centavos. It is issued by the Banco Central de la República Argentina (BCRA), the central bank created by Law 12,155 in the monetary and banking reform of 1935. The peso in use today is the fifth Argentine monetary unit since 1881; it was introduced on 1 January 1992 by Decree 2128/91, replacing the austral at 10,000 australes per peso.

Since 11 April 2025 the peso has traded in the Mercado Libre de Cambios under a regime of floating between moving bands, adopted in Phase 3 of the economic programme with initial limits of 1,000 and 1,400 pesos per US dollar that widened at 1 per cent a month. From 1 January 2026 the band floor and ceiling instead adjust each month at the pace of the latest monthly inflation figure published by INDEC, applied with a two-month lag. Inside the band the rate floats freely; the BCRA buys dollars at the floor and sells at the ceiling.

The April 2025 reform also dismantled most of the "cepo", the capital controls that had rationed foreign currency: the USD 200 monthly cap and all other restrictions on individuals' access to the exchange market were eliminated, and companies were allowed to remit dividends from profits earned from 2025 onward. In its plans for 2026, the BCRA said it may further ease the restrictions that remain on pre-2023 dividend stocks and commercial debts. On 20 October 2025 the BCRA signed an exchange-rate stabilisation agreement with the United States Treasury for up to USD 20 billion.

Inflation has repeatedly forced Argentina to change its monetary unit. The peso moneda nacional, established in 1881, gave way to the peso ley 18.188 in 1970 at 100 to one, the peso argentino in 1983 at 10,000 to one, the austral in 1985 at 1,000 to one, and the present peso in 1992 at 10,000 to one — thirteen zeros removed in just over a century. From its introduction the 1992 peso was convertible into US dollars at one to one, a parity abandoned in the crisis of 2002.

Banknotes in circulation run from 10 to 20,000 pesos and span two families: a wildlife series, including the 1,000-peso note that shows the hornero, declared Argentina's national bird in 1928, and the "Heroínas y Héroes de la Patria" series, whose notes honour the medical pioneers Cecilia Grierson and Ramón Carrillo (2,000 pesos, November 2023), Manuel Belgrano and María Remedios del Valle (10,000 pesos, May 2024) and Juan Bautista Alberdi (20,000 pesos, November 2024). Coins from 1 centavo to 10 pesos remain legal tender.