The Dominican peso
Currency · DOP · $ · 1 country
Monetary Law No. 1528, passed on 9 October 1947, created the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic and made it the only body allowed to issue notes and coins in the country. Until the constitution of 2010 the currency's official name was the peso oro, the gold peso. Notes printed from 2011 say pesos dominicanos instead.
The sign
The peso uses the dollar sign, $. Where it needs telling apart from other pesos and dollars it is written RD$, for República Dominicana, the form the central bank uses in its own tables. Centavos take the cent sign, ¢.
The same sign stands for 28 other currencies, among them the US dollar and the East Caribbean dollar.
- ISO code
- DOP
- ISO number
- 214
- Subunit
- centavo, 1/100
An amount, written out
$1,234.50
- $1,234.50English, SpanishDominican Republic
The sign in code
HTML, CSS, JavaScript, UTF-8
- HTML
$$$- CSS
content: "\0024";- JavaScript
"\u0024"- UTF-8
0x24- UTF-16
0x0024- UTF-32
0x00000024
Where the Dominican peso is the official currency
The Dominican Republic has paid in the peso alone since 1947, when the US dollar stopped circulating beside it.
About the Dominican peso
Who holds the power to issue pesos
The central bank opened on 23 October 1947, two weeks after the law that created it, as a decentralised and autonomous body. Its first notes, of 1, 5 and 10 pesos, came out that year. The American Bank Note Company printed them to match US dollar notes in size and features.
In 1961 the Council of State ordered paper notes for 50, 25 and 10 centavos. The central bank printed the first run itself in December 1961, and the bank records it as the only time notes were printed inside the country. The second run, in January 1962, came from the American Bank Note Company again.
Where the peso came from
The first Dominican peso arrived with independence from Haiti in 1844. It replaced the Haitian gourde at par and split into eight reales. Decimalisation in 1877 made it 100 centavos. Between 1891 and 1897 the republic joined the Latin Monetary Union and struck francos alongside the peso. In 1905 the US dollar replaced the peso outright, at five pesos to the dollar.
Wikipedia dates the peso oro to 1937, at par with the dollar, which kept circulating beside it until 1947. Coins of that year matched US coins of the era in weight, diameter and metal. A palm tree, the emblem of Rafael Trujillo's Dominican Party, filled the 1 centavo. In 1955 a silver peso marked twenty-five years of his rule with his profile; after his assassination in 1961 an estimated 32,550 of the 50,000 struck were recalled and melted. From 1963 the peso oro became a fiat currency, and base metal replaced silver in the coins.
How the gold peso lost its name
Article 229 of the constitution promulgated on 26 January 2010 named the currency the peso dominicano. The central bank followed in 2011, printing Pesos Dominicanos on its notes where Pesos Oro had stood, and at the same time changed the paper of the low denominations and added a security feature called SPARK to the high ones.
Which notes and coins circulate
The bank has issued six families of notes since 1947. The sixth came into circulation on 1 October 2014, at an event for its sixty-seventh anniversary. Law 146-11 of 12 July 2011 had named the Bayahíbe rose the national flower and told the bank to print it on new notes in place of the mahogany flower. It runs from 50 to 2,000 pesos. Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Matías Ramón Mella share the 100, and the Mirabal sisters appear on the 200. A 20 peso note on polymer went out in 2010.
The bank stopped printing the 5 peso note in 1997 and replaced it with a coin. Coins now run 1, 5, 10 and 25 pesos, and centavo coins are rarely found. The 1 peso has eleven sides and came back into circulation in 1991; the bimetallic 5 peso of 1997 marked the bank's fiftieth anniversary; the bimetallic 10 and the cupro-nickel 25 followed in 2005.
Common questions
Questions about the Dominican peso
What does RD$ mean on a Dominican price?
RD$ is the Dominican peso written with the letters of República Dominicana in front of the dollar sign. Wikipedia describes it as the form used where the peso needs telling apart from other pesos or dollars. The central bank writes its denominations this way, as in RD$2,000.
Is the US dollar legal tender in the Dominican Republic?
Wikipedia describes the peso as the only legal tender for all transactions, public or private, with the exception of the US dollar. The dollar has a longer history there: it replaced the first peso outright in 1905, at five pesos to the dollar, and circulated beside the peso oro until 1947.
Why did the peso oro become the peso dominicano?
The constitution promulgated on 26 January 2010 names the currency the peso dominicano in its Article 229. Until then the official name was peso oro, gold peso. Wikipedia dates that name to 1937, when the peso oro was set at par with the US dollar. The central bank changed the wording on its notes in 2011. Peso oro survives as a nickname.
Who appears on Dominican banknotes?
The sixth family, in circulation since 1 October 2014, carries portraits and national buildings. The 100 pesos shows Juan Pablo Duarte, Francisco del Rosario Sánchez and Matías Ramón Mella together, with the Puerta del Conde on the back. The 200 carries the Mirabal sisters, Patria, Minerva and María Teresa, and their monument. The 500 shows Salomé Ureña and Pedro Henríquez Ureña. The 1,000 shows the National Palace, and the 50 the Catedral Primada de América. The family also carries the Bayahíbe rose, which replaced the mahogany flower in 2014 under a law of 2011.