Peru Currency and Money Guide

The short version

The currency is the sol, written in the plural as soles. Cards work in Lima, Cusco, Arequipa and most places a visitor stays. Cash is what works in markets, on rural transport, at small restaurants, for tips and in the Sacred Valley villages. Counterfeit notes circulate, so where you obtain your money matters more in Peru than in most places.

Getting cash

ATMs are widespread and are the sensible default. The safety advice is specific and worth following exactly: use machines inside banks, supermarkets or large commercial buildings, and use them during business hours. A street facing machine at night is the setting for the express kidnapping described in our Peru travel safety guide, where a victim is driven between machines until the daily limits are exhausted.

Many machines dispense both soles and United States currency. Take soles for daily spending. Large denomination notes are difficult to break outside cities, so ask for smaller ones where the machine allows it and break big notes in supermarkets rather than in markets.

The two frauds worth knowing by name

Counterfeit notes

Counterfeit Peruvian and United States banknotes circulate. The practical defense is not to become an expert in security features but to control where your cash comes from: a bank, a machine inside one, or a licensed exchange house with a fixed address. Look at what you are handed before you walk away, and be more careful with change from a large note in a busy place.

The intis scam

This one is specific to Peru and it catches people because it does not look like a trick. There are reports of money changers in the Cusco tourist areas passing intis: a former Peruvian currency, long out of circulation and completely worthless. The notes look plausible to somebody who arrived yesterday.

The rule that defeats both frauds at once: never change money with somebody who approaches you in the street, however good the rate sounds and however official the identification looks.

Cards

Visa and Mastercard are widely accepted in cities and in established hotels and restaurants. American Express is accepted less often. Tell your bank you are traveling, because a card blocked on a Sunday in Cusco is a genuine problem and the branch that can fix it is thousands of kilometers away.

If a terminal offers to charge you in your home currency rather than the local one, decline. The conversion is done at a rate chosen by the merchant's provider and it is always worse than your own bank's.

What needs cash

• Markets, including the Sacred Valley markets and anything sold by a weaver or a producer.
• Rural and intercity buses, and collective transport.
• Small restaurants, menu del dia lunches, juice stalls and bakeries.
• Tips, and porters on a trek.
• Entry fees at smaller archaeological sites.
• Anywhere the power or the connection has gone out, which in the mountains is a normal Tuesday.

Tipping

Tipping is normal but modest, and it is not the structural part of anyone's wage that it is in the United States. Around ten percent in a restaurant that has given good service, small change for a taxi you arranged in advance, and a little for hotel staff.

Trekking is the exception and the one where it genuinely matters. Guides, cooks and porters on a multi day trek are tipped, the amounts are meaningful to them, and the sums involved are larger than anything else on the trip. Ask your operator what is customary before you set out, take the cash with you in small notes, and do not assume a card will be an option at 4,000 meters.

Costs, in relative terms

No figures appear here, because a price published on a page reviewed once a year is wrong within months and gets read as a quote. What is stable is the shape of it. Peru is inexpensive by North American standards for food, local transport and accommodation outside the top tier. The costs that are not inexpensive are the ones that are permit controlled or monopoly supplied: the train to Machu Picchu, entry to the sanctuary, the Inca Trail, and domestic flights booked late.

Budget those four separately and early. They will dominate the trip's cost and they are the items least responsive to shopping around.

Verify before you travel

Bank and card charges, withdrawal limits and site entry fees change. Confirm them with your own bank and with the official ticketing services close to travel.

Sources

• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Peru safety and security: protests and strikes and their effect on the southern railways, street crime in Lima, Cusco and Arequipa, robbery by criminals posing as taxi drivers at Jorge Chavez airport and the bus terminals, express kidnapping, counterfeit notes and the withdrawn intis passed by street changers in Cusco, methanol in spirit drinks, the requirement to carry identification, the prohibition on photographing military sites, the illegality of carrying coca leaf out of the country, driving and overnight bus standards, the rainy season from November to May, and the earthquake and volcanic risk. Accessed 16 September 2026.
• UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office: Peru travel advice: the two areas under a standing advisory against all but essential travel, the strip within twenty kilometers south of the Putumayo River and the Colombian border in Loreto, and the Valley of the Apurimac, Ene and Mantaro rivers, and the statement that no travel can be guaranteed safe. Accessed 16 September 2026.