The commercial Chilean peso rate with the time it was taken, a two-way converter and the amounts a Santiago trip is actually priced in.
We could not load the stored rate. Use the refresh button or type a rate below to convert.
Most Brazilians open this page with a Santiago trip in the calendar — the malls of Las Condes, a week of skiing at Valle Nevado, the Atacama. The currency behind that budget is a commodity currency in the textbook sense: Chile mines roughly a quarter of the world's copper, the metal dominates its exports, and its price is set mostly by industrial demand in China. So a shopping budget for a mall in Santiago is partly hostage to construction on the other side of the Pacific. The other half is the Banco Central de Chile: a floating peso, a 3% inflation target, and intervention only a handful of times in twenty years.
Two things about the unit catch visitors out. It is small — a coffee is a four-digit number and a restaurant bill a five-digit one, which is why the table here starts at a thousand pesos rather than at one. And the smallest coins are gone: the one and five peso pieces were withdrawn and cash totals round to the nearest ten, so the centavo has no role in daily life. Then there is the Unidad de Fomento, an inflation-indexed unit republished daily and used for rents, mortgages and large contracts — property is listed in UF, not pesos, which is why a flat in Santiago appears to cost four digits.
The number at the top comes from a stored quote a scheduled job refreshes every half hour, with the moment it was taken printed underneath. It is the commercial rate: a market reference, not a price tag. Chilean pesos in cash cost more than this in Brazil, and the gap is wider than for the dollar — not every bureau keeps them, and those that do charge a fatter spread on something they rarely move, with IOF on top. Many travellers carry dollars and change them in Chile instead. Type the rate you were quoted into the field above and compare.
From the market feed for the Chilean peso against the real, stored here by a job that runs every 30 minutes; the date and time of that quote are printed under the value. The refresh button goes to the same feed live from your browser; at weekends it stays put, because the market is closed.
Because this is the commercial rate, the wholesale reference banks use between themselves. Cash carries the seller spread plus IOF, and a card the operator spread plus IOF. For the Chilean peso that spread runs wider than for the dollar, because Brazilian bureaux sell far less of it. Ask for the closed rate and type it into the field above.
Usually copper. Chile is the largest producer in the world and the metal dominates its exports, so the peso firms when copper rises and slips when Chinese industrial demand cools. Days when it moves on news from Beijing rather than Santiago are normal.
The Unidad de Fomento is an inflation-indexed unit of account, republished daily, used for contracts that must hold their value: rents, mortgages, insurance, tuition. A price in UF is a price in real terms, and converting it to pesos is a second step. Visitors usually meet it when looking at property.
A method rather than an answer: ask what your bank closes for pesos in cash, ask what it charges on card purchases abroad including IOF, and compare both against the reference here. Worth asking at check-in too — hotels in Chile can be exempt from the 19% VAT for non-residents paying in foreign currency.
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