What Is Brazil's Currency? The Real, With a Comma Set by Law

Real, reais, R$ and BRL

The real has been Brazil's money since July 1, 1994. Law 9,069/1995, the Plano Real law, makes it the national unit, with curso legal — legal tender — across the country.

• R$ goes in front of the number, by law: sums of money "serão grafadas precedidas do símbolo R$", preceded by the symbol.
• BRL is the ISO 4217 code. The list SIX published on September 17, 2026 reads "Brazilian Real", BRL, number 986, two decimal places.

The comma is the law's, the dot is habit

Article 1 of Law 9,069/1995 has two short paragraphs behind every Brazilian price tag. The first puts R$ in front. The second says the centavo is written "sob a forma decimal, precedida da vírgula que segue a unidade" — as a decimal, after the comma that follows the reais. Brazil writes money the other way around from the US:

The law never mentions the dot. Grouping thousands with it is practice, one the central bank follows: its 1994 notice fixing the conversion rate reads "2.750,00". Read R$ 1.500 the American way and you are off by a factor of a thousand. Elsewhere, this site uses the American style.

Paragraph 5 of the same article allows fractions below a centavo in a few markets, foreign-currency quotes among them, which is why the central bank's dollar rate can carry four decimals and a price tag only two.

Where the real came from: 2,750 to one

Brazil did not simply cut zeros in 1994. From March 1 it ran a second unit beside the old money, the Unidade Real de Valor (URV), a unit of account that could not settle a debt until the central bank issued it as the real. Law 8,880/1994 set its first value: 647.50 cruzeiros reais, the old currency.

The central bank reset the URV daily, tied by law to the old currency's loss of purchasing power. On June 29, 1994, its Comunicado 4,000 fixed the last value: 2,750.00 cruzeiros reais for June 30. The climb is inflation, logged day by day. On July 1 the URV became the real, one for one — Law 9,069 converts every URV amount into "igual número de REAIS" — so 2,750 old units bought one new one.

One 1995 clause is dead: article 3, which tied each real issued to reserves at one US dollar per real, a parity the National Monetary Council could change. It is struck through on the government's site, repealed by Law 13,820/2019. Nothing in force fixes the real to the dollar.

The notes and coins you will get as change

The second family of notes began launching in 2010. Its seven:

Every front shows the efígie da República, a symbolic effigy of the Republic. The newest, the 200, is gray and sepia and the same size as the 20.

The first family, launched in 1994, is still money: checked on September 25, 2026, the central bank's FAQ says both families remain valid. They carried the same animals on the 2, 5, 10, 20, 50 and 100 — the 2 and the 20 joined in 2001 and 2002 — plus a hummingbird on a one-real note the second family never had. A commemorative polymer 10 from 2000, with Pedro Álvares Cabral on the front, is still listed as in circulation. But the traffic is one-way. Since July 10, 2024, a bank holding an account at the central bank must send every genuine first-family note it receives back to the central bank. On September 25, 2026, its daily data still counted about 417 million of them, 148.6 million being one-real notes, against 7.5 billion second-family notes.

Coins come in 1, 5, 10, 25 and 50 centavos and R$ 1, from two families, 1994 and 1998, both valid except the 1994 steel one-real coin, out of circulation since December 23, 2003. The one-centavo coin is the oddity: its production table ends in 2004, yet it is still listed as in circulation, with 3.19 billion counted on September 25, 2026.

On cash and cards: how much to carry, ATMs for a foreign card, cash without a local card and paying by card.

How to check a note

The central bank's checklist for second-family notes: the watermark, the hidden number, the holographic stripe on the 50 and 100, the color-changing number on the 10 and 20, and raised print. The 200 came later; its launch notice lists, among others, a maned-wolf watermark, a 200 that turns from blue to green as the note moves, a security thread and fluorescent marks under ultraviolet light. On first-family notes: watermark, latent image, see-through register and raised print.

If a note still looks wrong, the central bank says you may refuse it. If one ends up with you, it advises taking it to a bank for examination and asking for a recibo de retenção, a retention receipt. Do not pass it on: under article 289 of the Penal Code, returning a fake to circulation once you know it is false carries six months to two years of detention and a fine, even if you received it in good faith.

How the dollar rate is formed

Nobody sets it. The central bank describes a floating rate that moves freely with currency flows, with no ceiling or floor, and says it steps in only to keep that market working properly, including by acting against any disorderly swings, liquidity shortages or a lack of hedging instruments.

The bank publishes a reference instead, the PTAX. Under Resolution BCB 45/2020, in force since January 1, 2021, it polls the dealers accredited to trade currency with it four times each business day: two-minute polls that start at a random moment in the first ten minutes after 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 and 13:00, Brasília time as the PTAX page dates it. It drops the two highest and two lowest dollar quotes and averages the rest; the day's PTAX averages the four polls.

The bank's FAQ calls PTAX a reference for approximate calculations, not a mandatory rate. The rate a bank, exchange counter or card issuer applies is its own: see what changing cash costs and how your card converts.

Dólar comercial and dólar turismo, the commercial and tourism dollar, are not two markets: the central bank says the law provides for one, and the names mark purpose, tourism meaning travel money, usually cash. Rates are named from the institution's side, so changing dollars into reais gets you its buying rate.

Sources

Read September 25, 2026.

• Presidency of the Republic — Law 9,069/1995, arts. 1, 2, 3 (struck through) and 13; Law 8,880/1994, arts. 1, 2 and 4; Law 13,820/2019, art. 10; Penal Code, art. 289; Decree 12,002/2024, art. 11, II, j; the writing manual, 3rd edition
• Banco Central do Brasil, norms — Comunicados 4,000/1994, 4,011/1994 and 36,132/2020; Normative Instruction BCB 488/2024; Resolution BCB 45/2020
• Its pages and data — notes and coins issued; suspect notes; the 200 note; the commemorative 10; FAQ on notes, coins, PTAX, the floating rate, buying and selling and commercial and tourism rates; the PTAX system; money in circulation
• SIX — ISO 4217 List One, published September 17, 2026

Method on how we research; Jeff Bruno writes from Curitiba. Next door: how to pay in Brazil, PIX for tourists, sending money to Brazil, money and payments.

What we could not verify

• A rule that makes the dot the thousands separator. The two currency laws stop at the symbol and the decimal comma. The Presidency's writing manual, in its third edition, sets none either; the sums in its sample veto message are written R$ 1.250,00, R$ 1.400,00 and R$ 1.550,00. The nearest thing is a drafting rule: Decree 12,002/2024 tells federal drafters to write a year "sem o ponto entre as casas do milhar e da centena", without the dot between the thousands and hundreds places — a rule that takes the dot for granted and binds only federal drafters.
• Why one-centavo coins stopped being minted in 2004. Neither the coin pages, the FAQ nor a search of the central bank's norms gives a reason or a plan.
• When first-family notes stop being legal tender. The 2024 instruction routes them back but sets no end date; nothing else we read gives one.