Colombian Peso (COP)

About the Colombian Peso

The Colombian Peso (COP) is the official currency of Colombia. Its symbol is $, and it formally divides into 100 centavos, although centavo coins no longer circulate. The peso is issued exclusively by Banco de la República, Colombia's independent central bank, created by Law 25 of 1923 and given the sole right to issue the country's legal tender. Banco de la República operates a free-floating exchange-rate regime, so the peso's value against other currencies is set by supply and demand in the foreign-exchange market.

Banco de la República follows an inflation-targeting strategy within a flexible exchange-rate regime, aiming to keep inflation near the 3.0 per cent target set by its Board of Directors while output moves toward its potential level. In practice, that means the exchange rate does the work of absorbing external shocks, leaving the policy interest rate — not the currency's level — as the Bank's main lever for steering inflation toward target.

Colombia's Congress authorised a new note-issuing bank in 1922, and a commission of foreign advisers led by Edwin Walter Kemmerer helped design its statutes. Law 25 of 1923 then established Banco de la República, jointly capitalised by the government and private banks, with the exclusive right to issue Colombian currency, manage international reserves and act as banker to the government. The 1991 Constitution made the Bank independent of the government and made preserving the peso's purchasing power its principal constitutional objective.

In the Bank for International Settlements' Triennial Central Bank Survey, the standard benchmark of global foreign-exchange activity, the Colombian peso recorded average daily turnover of US$20 billion in April 2025, a 0.2 per cent share of global trading. That placed the peso around 30th among the world's most-traded currencies, just behind the Chilean and Philippine pesos and just ahead of the Malaysian ringgit, up from US$6 billion in the BIS survey conducted in 2013.

Cash circulates as banknotes of 2,000, 5,000, 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 and 100,000 pesos; the current family shares common security features across denominations, while the previous main series of the same values remains legal tender alongside it. Coins run from 50 to 1,000 pesos in a bimetallic series depicting native species such as the spectacled bear, scarlet macaw, crystal frog and loggerhead turtle, issued from the second half of 2012, and older 5-, 10- and 20-peso coins also remain in circulation.