The legal currency of Chile is the Chilean peso. Currently there are coins of 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 pesos and banknotes of 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000.
Origins and history
The peso was established as the monetary unit of Chile in 1925, with a content of 0.183057 grams of fine gold and divided into one hundred cents. Ten pesos made a condor. Inflation made fractional coins gradually dropped into disuse and in 1955 a legal provision stipulated that payments would be only paid in whole numbers.
Following the enactment of a new law in 1959, in the 1st January 1960 the peso was replaced by the escudo and the organic law of 30th March 1960 provided in Article 51 that the banknotes should express their value in escudos, hundredths and half hundredth, as appropriate, and bear the national emblem.
In 1973 a new statutory provision, Legislative Decree 231 of 31st December 1973, removed the fractions of the escudo in accounting and in the documents issued in local currency and in 1975 the peso would be re-established as a monetary unit. According to a decree issued in 1975, from 29th September of that year the currency of Chile was renamed peso again, and on that occasion the change amounted to a thousand escudos.
At present, the Central Bank of Chile has the exclusive right to issue notes and coins and may outsource, within or outside the country, the printing of banknotes and coinage. Features of banknotes and their security measures are established by the Board of the Central Bank of Chile.
Source: Central Bank of Chile
Current Chilean peso coins and banknotes
Currently, coins of Chilean peso are: 1, 5, 10, 50, 100 and 500 Chilean pesos.
Regarding banknotes, denominations are: 500, 1,000, 2,000, 5,000, 10,000 and 20,000 Chilean pesos.
Did you know?
- The Board of the Central Bank of Chile is the one in charge of choosing the design of banknotes.
- The latest family of Chilean peso banknotes was created by the Central Bank of Chile between 2009 and 2011.
- The antú, a mapuche symbol which represented the Sun giving life to the Earth, appears in all the banknotes of the new families in different layouts.
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