What is the currency of Cuba?

The currency of Cuba is the Cuban peso, abbreviated CUP.

Known in Spanish as the peso cubano, it is Cuba’s official national currency and is divided into 100 centavos. The peso was established by Cuban law in 1914 and began circulating in 1915, initially at parity with the U.S. dollar. Cuba’s central bank issues the coins and banknotes.

For many years, visitors encountered two Cuban pesos: the ordinary Cuban peso and the Cuban convertible peso, or CUC. The CUC was introduced in the 1990s and was used alongside the regular peso in a dual-currency system. Cuba ended that arrangement on January 1, 2021, when the CUC was withdrawn and the Cuban peso became the sole official national currency.

A common mistake is answering “U.S. dollar” or “euro” because those currencies may appear in tourism, private commerce or foreign-exchange transactions. They do not replace the Cuban peso as Cuba’s official currency. The symbol $ can also cause confusion, so CUP is the clearest way to distinguish it from other pesos.