Mexican Peso (MXN)

About the Mexican Peso

The Mexican Peso (MXN) is the official currency of Mexico, issued by Banco de México, the country's central bank, and written with the dollar sign $ — the forms Mex$ and MX$ distinguish it from the US dollar where confusion is possible. One peso is divided into 100 centavos, and its ISO 4217 numeric code is 484. The peso is used only in Mexico, with no other country granting it official-currency status.

The peso has floated freely since December 22, 1994, when Mexico's Foreign Exchange Commission agreed to abandon the crawling-band arrangement during that year's financial crisis. Under the floating regime, which has remained in effect ever since, Banco de México states that the exchange rate is determined by the free market without the intervention of the authorities. The central bank publishes a daily reference rate for the peso against the US dollar, known as the FIX, which is used for settling dollar-denominated obligations payable in Mexico.

The currency in circulation today dates from January 1, 1993, when Mexico introduced a new monetary unit, the nuevo peso, equal to 1,000 of the old pesos it replaced. The redenomination, decreed in the Official Federal Gazette on June 22, 1992, followed the high inflation of the 1980s, a period in which Mexico operated exchange controls and multiple official exchange rates. The word nuevo was later dropped, and the unit reverted to the simple name peso. From 1954 to 1976 the peso had been fixed at 12.50 per US dollar.

In the Bank for International Settlements' Triennial Central Bank Survey, average daily turnover in the Mexican peso reached about US$147 billion in April 2025, roughly 2% of global foreign exchange activity when both sides of each trade are counted. That made the peso the highest-turnover Latin American currency in the survey, ahead of the Brazilian real, and one of the 15 most traded currencies worldwide. Peso turnover has grown from roughly US$7 billion a day in the 1998 survey.

Banco de México's current banknote family, the G series, comprises notes of 20 pesos — a 2021 commemorative design — 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1,000 pesos, alongside coins of 5, 10, 20 and 50 centavos and 1, 2, 5, 10 and 20 pesos. The 50-peso note, printed on polymer and in circulation since October 28, 2021, shows ancient Tenochtitlan on its face and the axolotl amid the Xochimilco lake landscape on its back. Notes of earlier series remain legal tender while being withdrawn: banks deposit them with the central bank rather than reissuing them.