What material did the Maya use as a form of currency?

What material did the Maya use as a form of currency? The Maya used cacao beans as a form of currency and exchange.

Cacao beans came from the cacao tree, a plant native to tropical Mesoamerica. The Maya consumed cacao as a drink, often preparing it with water, spices, or other ingredients rather than turning it into the sweet chocolate familiar today. Cacao also carried religious and social importance, appearing in elite feasts, rituals, and representations of wealth.

Because cacao beans were small, portable, and countable, they could function as a practical medium of exchange. Colonial-era accounts from Mesoamerica describe cacao beans being used in market transactions, and the practice is frequently associated with the Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples. Their value depended on quality, supply, and local economic conditions.

This does not mean that every Maya community used cacao as a standardized national currency or that gold was irrelevant. Maya economies also relied on barter, tribute, labor, and valuable goods such as textiles, salt, obsidian, and jade. Gold was less central to Classic Maya exchange than it became in later Spanish descriptions of the Americas, while cacao was especially useful for everyday market payments.