Money in Colombia: ATMs, Cards, Cash, and Tipping

Our cost of traveling in Colombia post answers how much a trip costs. This one answers a different question: how the money itself works once you land. Which machines to use, what they charge, when your card will be refused, what the tip on your bill legally is, and the tax refund almost nobody claims on the way out.

The Currency, and the Zeros

Colombia uses the Colombian peso, written COP. Banknotes come in six values:

COP 2,000 and COP 5,000. The small notes, and the ones worth hoarding for street food, bus fares, and market stalls.
COP 10,000 and COP 20,000. The everyday workhorses.
COP 50,000 and COP 100,000. What ATMs like to give you, and what small vendors often cannot change.

Coins cover the smaller values below that, up to COP 1,000.

The number of zeros is the first thing that disorients people. A coffee at COP 5,000 and a hotel night at COP 350,000 involve a lot of digits, and prices in the hundreds of thousands are ordinary rather than alarming. Colombians deal with this by dropping the zeros in speech: cinco mil becomes “cinco,” and a taxi driver quoting “veinte” means COP 20,000. Written menus and signs sometimes do the same, listing a dish at “18” rather than COP 18,000.

The COP 100,000 note is the practical problem. Many ATMs dispense them, and small shops, street vendors, and taxi drivers frequently cannot change one. Break large notes at supermarkets, chain pharmacies, or busy restaurants, and hold onto your COP 10,000 and COP 20,000 notes deliberately.

Cards Work More Places Than You Expect, Until They Don’t

In Bogotá, Medellín, Cartagena, and Cali, cards work at hotels, supermarkets, chain restaurants, malls, pharmacies, and most established tour operators, and contactless is common. Visa and Mastercard are broadly accepted. American Express is far patchier and should never be your only card.

Where cards stop working is predictable: street food, neighborhood tiendas, market stalls, small family restaurants, many taxis, rural towns, national park entrances, and anything involving a boat. The rule of thumb is that the more interesting and local the transaction, the more likely it is to be cash.

Carry both, and keep two cards from different networks in different places. A single blocked card in a small town is a genuinely bad afternoon.

What ATMs Actually Cost

This is where most visitors quietly lose money.

Colombian ATMs charge foreign cards a fee per withdrawal, levied by the Colombian bank, entirely separately from whatever your own bank charges you. Reported fees generally sit somewhere between COP 12,000 (about USD 4) and COP 30,000 (about USD 10) per transaction. Bancolombia and BBVA sit at the expensive end. Smaller institutions are often cheaper.

Two warnings about those figures. They change, and per-bank numbers circulating on travel blogs go stale fast. So do not plan around a specific bank’s fee you read somewhere, including here.

What is reliable is the mechanism. The machine must show you the fee on screen and ask you to accept it before it dispenses anything. That screen is the moment that matters. If the number is ugly, cancel and walk to a different bank’s machine. Nobody is obliged to accept the first fee they are shown, and the difference between the cheapest and dearest machine on the same street can be triple.

Two habits follow from a per-transaction fee. Withdraw larger amounts less often, since the fee is the same whether you take out COP 200,000 or the machine’s maximum. And find out what that maximum is, because per-transaction caps vary widely between banks and are often lower than travelers expect. If a machine refuses a large amount, try a smaller one before concluding your card is blocked.

For where to withdraw safely, use machines inside bank branches, shopping malls, or busy supermarkets rather than isolated street units, and prefer daylight. Our safety guidelines cover this properly.

Always Pay in Pesos

When a card machine or ATM offers to charge you in your home currency instead of pesos, decline. Always.

This is dynamic currency conversion, and the exchange rate it applies is set by the payment terminal’s provider rather than by your bank, almost always at a worse rate than your own bank would give you. It is presented as a convenience and framed helpfully. Choosing “pesos” or “COP” is the correct answer every time, at every terminal, in every country that offers this.

You Probably Cannot Use Nequi or Daviplata

Colombia runs heavily on two mobile wallets, Nequi and Daviplata, and you will see their QR codes everywhere, including at market stalls and with street vendors. Visitors regularly ask how to get one.

For most tourists, the answer is that you cannot. Nequi’s own help center states that a passport is not an accepted document, and that holders of a passport or a PEP cannot yet create an account. Both wallets are built around a Colombian cédula, a cédula de extranjería, or a Venezuelan PPT. A tourist entry stamp does not qualify.

Treat any service offering to set one up for you with a passport as what it is. Those offers involve using somebody else’s identity documents.

Tipping, and the Law That Protects You

Sit-down restaurants commonly add a 10 percent propina or servicio to the bill. Colombian law is unusually clear about what that is.

Under Law 1935 of 2018, a suggested tip may not exceed 10 percent of the value of the service. The establishment must inform you that it is voluntary, verbally or through notices in the venue and on the menu, and you have the explicit right to decline it, to change the amount, or to pay it in full. Staff will typically ask “¿Desea incluir el servicio?” before closing the bill.

So: check whether it is already on the bill before adding anything, and know that saying no is a normal, legal, unremarkable thing to do rather than a confrontation. If the service was good, the 10 percent is the norm and it goes to the staff.

Beyond restaurants, tipping is modest. Rounding up a taxi fare is appreciated and not expected. Guides, porters, and drivers on multi-day trips are commonly tipped as a gesture. Counter service and street food need no tip at all.

The VAT Refund Most Visitors Never Claim

Colombia refunds sales tax to non-resident foreign tourists on goods they take out of the country, and remarkably few visitors use it.

The DIAN, Colombia’s tax authority, refunds 100 percent of the IVA paid on qualifying goods. The thresholds are set in Tax Value Units, or UVT, which for 2026 is COP 52,374 under DIAN Resolution 000238 of December 2025. Each invoice must be worth at least 3 UVT, roughly COP 157,122 (about USD 51), and the maximum refundable per application is 200 UVT, roughly COP 10,474,800 (about USD 3,400).

The requirements that catch people out:

You need a proper electronic invoice. A printed POS receipt is rejected, so ask the shop for a factura electrónica at the time of purchase, with your passport details.
The invoice must be dated between your entry to and exit from Colombia.
The goods must physically leave the country, and may be inspected.
You claim it at departure, at an authorized customs point, using form 2737 and your passport or Andean Migration Card.
The refund is paid to a foreign-issued card, with financial and operating costs deducted. DIAN allows up to 30 days for processing at its offices, or 10 days via self-service kiosks.

It is worth the trouble on a single significant purchase, such as an emerald, leather goods, or a mochila of real value. It is not worth it on a handful of souvenirs.

Changing Money

Cash withdrawal from an ATM usually beats exchanging currency, but if you are changing notes, the airport is the worst rate you will see all trip. Use established casas de cambio in the city, count what you are handed before leaving the counter, and expect to show your passport.

The official reference rate is the TRM, published daily by Colombia’s financial superintendency. It is the benchmark rather than a rate you will personally get, but it tells you whether an offer is roughly fair.

The Short Version

Bring two cards on different networks, expect to use cash daily, take out larger amounts less often to spread the ATM fee, read the fee screen and cancel if it is bad, always pay in pesos, break your COP 100,000 notes at supermarkets, know the 10 percent tip is voluntary by law, and get an electronic invoice if you buy anything substantial.

For what any of it costs in the first place, see our cost of traveling in Colombia post, and for what to have with you on arrival, our entry documents page.

Sources checked August 14, 2026. Bank fees, withdrawal caps, and the UVT are revised regularly. Treat every figure here as a guide and confirm the current one at the machine or with the authority before relying on it.