Money, cards and ATMs in Colombia

The peso, and the missing thousands

Colombia uses the peso (COP), and the numbers are large enough that people drop the thousands in speech. "Veinte" for a taxi means 20,000, not 20. A menu that says 25 means COP 25,000.

• Cards work in cities and not much beyond them. Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena and Cali are fine. Small towns, street food, route buses and the coffee-farm economy are cash.
• Use ATMs inside a bank, a supermarket or a mall, during opening hours. That is the FCDO's wording, not a nervous suggestion, and it is aimed at both skimming and the walk away from the machine.
• Decline dynamic currency conversion. If the screen offers to bill you in your own currency, say no and take pesos; the markup is several per cent and it is pure loss.
• Change money in a casa de cambio or a bank, never on the street. Street changers in Cartagena and on the Venezuelan border are running a short-change routine, not a business.

The taxes, which are worth understanding

• Foreign tourists do not pay the 19% IVA on hotel accommodation. This is real, it is in article 481 of the tax code, and DIAN reconfirmed it in 2025. Show your passport and your proof of entry at check-in and the hotel zero-rates the room. Not every small guesthouse knows how; the chains all do.
• Restaurants charge either 8% consumption tax or 19% IVA, never both. The 8% applies to ordinary restaurants above the turnover threshold; franchises charge 19% instead. Small independent places charge neither.
• The 10% propina is a cap and it is optional. Under Ley 1935 de 2018 the restaurant must ask you before adding it, and you may decline it, reduce it or have it removed. It goes to the staff who served you, so tipping when the service was good is the decent thing - but being told it is compulsory is a well-worn trick with foreigners.

What things cost

• This is an inexpensive country by European or North American standards, and the gap widens the further you get from Cartagena's walled city, which is priced like a resort.
• A city bus or metro ride is COP 3,550 to COP 3,900, the same order everywhere.
• The menú del día - soup, a main, a juice - is the cheapest good lunch in Latin America and the thing to eat at midday.
• Cartagena's old town is the outlier, where a coffee and a plate can cost several times what the same thing costs in Bogotá four hours away.
• Cash above USD 10,000 must be declared at customs on the way in and out.