Brazil is the South American country that uses the real as its currency.
The Brazilian real, written as real in the singular and reais in the plural, has the symbol R$ and the international code BRL. It is divided into 100 centavos and is issued under the authority of Brazil’s central bank. The currency is used throughout Brazil, South America’s largest country and one of the world’s largest economies.
The modern real was introduced on 1 July 1994 as part of the Plano Real, an economic stabilization program designed to end years of severe inflation. It replaced the short-lived cruzeiro real. At its introduction, one real equaled 2,750 cruzeiros reais, reflecting the scale of earlier currency devaluations and reforms.
The name can cause historical confusion because Brazil also used an older currency called the real, whose plural was réis, until 1942. The modern currency revived that Portuguese-derived name but uses reais as its plural. Other South American countries use currencies such as the Colombian peso, Peruvian sol, and Chilean peso, so the real is a specifically Brazilian identifier.