Peso symbol
The peso symbol ₱ is a capital P crossed by two horizontal strokes — and it belongs, officially, to one country: the Philippines. Everywhere else the world’s many pesos travel, they wear the dollar sign $ with a local prefix instead. Copy ₱ here with the amounts it prices, the country-by-country map of peso signs, and the formatting rules that keep a peso from being mistaken for a dollar.
Copy the peso signs
Peso amounts ready to copy
One name, many pesos
| Country | Sign in daily use | Currency code |
|---|---|---|
| Philippines | ₱ — the only peso with its own dedicated sign | PHP |
| Mexico | $ at home; written Mex$ abroad to avoid dollar confusion | MXN |
| Colombia, Argentina, Chile, Cuba | $ — context and the code do the distinguishing | COP · ARS · CLP · CUP |
| Dominican Republic | RD$ — the letters ride along with the sign | DOP |
| Uruguay | $U — the U marks the country | UYU |
The name is Spanish for “weight”, and the ancestor is famous: the Spanish peso — the silver “piece of eight” — was the world’s first global currency, circulating from Manila to Madrid to the Americas. The Philippine sign’s double stroke descends from the colonial-era scribal abbreviation for that peso. When the modern Unicode standard gave the sign its own codepoint, U+20B1, it assigned it to the Philippine peso — the one currency that had never stopped using the P-with-strokes as its everyday mark.
Formatting and typing
Write the sign before the amount with no space — ₱1,250.00 — using commas for thousands and two decimal places for centavos (the hundredth of a peso, whose own sign is ¢). For banking and international documents, the three-letter code does the talking: PHP 500. And whenever a $ amount could be read as US dollars, add the local marker (Mex$, RD$, or the code) — the peso family shares its sign with the dollar, so clarity is the writer’s job.
| Platform | Method |
|---|---|
| Windows (Word) | Type 20B1 then Alt + X |
| Windows (general) | Hold Alt and type 8369 on the numeric keypad where the app supports Alt codes |
| Mac | No single key — Character Viewer (search “peso”) or copy from here |
| HTML | Decimal code 8369 — the sign has no named entity in common use |
Explore more
The sign most pesos actually wear is the dollar symbol, the whole family gathers at the currency symbols hub, and the euro’s dedicated sign lives on the euro symbol page.
Frequently asked questions
Is ₱ used in Mexico?
No — Mexico’s peso is written with the dollar sign $, clarified as Mex$ outside the country. The dedicated ₱ sign (U+20B1) is the Philippine peso’s alone, which is exactly why Unicode assigned it there: no other peso uses the double-stroked P as its living sign.
Why do so many countries call their money “peso”?
They inherited it from Spain’s empire: the Spanish peso was minted across the colonies for three centuries, and the successor states kept the trusted name for their own currencies. Today eight countries run a peso — one name, eight separate currencies, eight different values.
₱ or PHP — which should a document use?
The sign for prices aimed at readers (₱1,250.00 on a menu or receipt); the code for anything financial, legal or international (PHP 1,250.00), where the three letters remove all doubt about which currency — and which country — is meant.
What is a centavo in ₱ amounts?
The hundredth part of a Philippine peso: ₱50.50 is fifty pesos and fifty centavos. The centavo’s own sign is ¢ — the same cent sign the dollar uses — and small Philippine coins are still denominated in centavos (sentimo in Filipino).
