Money, cards and ATMs in El Salvador

The currency is the US dollar

• El Salvador dollarised in 2001 and the US dollar is the currency. The colon is history.
• Prices are in dollars, cash machines dispense dollars, and there is nothing to exchange if you arrive from the United States.
• Small notes matter. Twenties are hard to break outside the cities, and a fifty is often refused outright.
• Worn or torn notes may be rejected, which is a habit of dollarised economies generally.

Bitcoin: what actually happened

• Bitcoin was made legal tender in 2021 and merchants were legally required to accept it. That is the version in every guide from those years.
• Decreto 199, in January 2025, reformed that away as a condition of the IMF's 1.4 billion dollar programme. Acceptance is now voluntary, and only in wholly private transactions; the articles obliging the state to take it were repealed and taxes are payable only in US dollars.
• Read carefully, the law still uses the words "curso legal" - legal tender - which is why you will find flat contradictions online about whether it was abolished. What changed, and what matters to you, is that no business has to accept it and the government will not.
• In practice it was never widely used - by 2024 the large majority of Salvadorans were not transacting in it at all.
• You may still see Bitcoin signs, particularly in El Zonte where the experiment began. Paying that way is a choice, not a requirement, and it is not the way to buy a bus ticket.

Cards and cash

• Cards work in San Salvador, the malls, hotels and the surf towns.
• Cash rules elsewhere, and in markets and on buses everywhere.
• Use cash machines inside banks or malls during the day. The FCDO records isolated robberies of tourists, and a street-facing machine at night is the classic setting.
• Santa Elena, San Benito and the main malls are the safer parts of the capital for this and everything else.

Tipping

• 10% is often already on the bill. If not, 10% is normal.
• Surf instructors, guides and drivers are tipped in small dollar notes.