Currency Exchange in Argentina: Official Rate, Blue Dollar, Western Union, … (2024)

Argentina is experiencing an endless economic crisis.

During our first visit, in 2017, we already encountered problems withdrawing money. Many ATMs were empty, and when they weren’t, withdrawal limits were very low.

Since then, we had a recommendation for travelers: come with lots of euros or dollars in cash, and exchange money locally.

In 2024, this recommendation is not really necessary.

The economic situation is no better than before; price inflation and the devaluation of the Argentine peso are impressive, but for foreign tourists, there’s an easier way.

The first point to keep in mind is that when you want to convert a foreign currency into Argentine pesos, there is an official rate and an unofficial rate (the blue dollar).

And the unofficial rate is MUCH more favorable than the official rate.

If you withdraw money from an ATM, you’ll get the official rate, a big loss!

Hence the classic recommendation to come with euros or dollars in cash and exchange money, not at a currency exchange office, but on the street!

Florida Street in Buenos Aires is known as an informal exchange zone where you can get a rate close to the blue dollar. It’s better to speak at least basic Spanish, and you have no protection against scams.

But there’s a much simpler way!

First, credit cards are accepted in many places. And Visa and Mastercard apply a rate close to the blue dollar !

• Visa directly applies the favorable rate
• Mastercard applies the official rate, then refunds you the difference a few days later.

Better yet! In hotels, if you pay for your stay by credit card, you don’t have to pay the 21% VAT!

And if you need Argentine pesos in cash, the best solution is to use Western Union!

The principle is simple: you go to the Western Union website and make a money transfer to yourself, paying by credit card (in euros).

Two minutes after the payment, you can withdraw the equivalent Argentine pesos at any Western Union location in Argentina. You just need to present the transaction number (received by email) and your passport.

I don’t know how Western Union does it, but there are no fees, and the rate is better than the blue dollar !

EDIT : Actually, only the first transfer is free, not the subsequent ones. For a €100 transfer, I had €3.90 in fees. But these fees are more than offset by the fact that we get a better rate than the blue dollar. Even with fees, Western Union remains very interesting.

We did this in Salta, and it works very well. Plan ahead for carrying cash… Exchanging €250, we ended up with 350 bills of 1,000 pesos; it takes up space!

EDIT Buenos Aires : I confirm that it’s much more complicated in Buenos Aires. Most Western Union withdrawal points display “no hay sistema”, indicating that Western Union operations are not possible. I didn’t understand the reason since it was possible to do regular exchange operations, a sign that there was money available. Don’t hesitate to ask where it’s possible; people know, and it seems to change depending on the day. I finally found a point “that had the system” but they had no money left; I had to come back at 1 PM. I did, and after about 30 minutes in line, I was able to withdraw. Given that each withdrawal operation in Buenos Aires can be long and complicated, it’s probably better to withdraw a lot at once. Without necessarily going overboard (I saw a tourist couple withdraw €1,000, i.e., more than 1,000 bills of 1,000 ARS, enough to fill a backpack…): since the currency regularly loses value, there’s no point in stocking up.

We haven’t yet had the chance to do the same operation in Buenos Aires, but the Western Union points near us are all poorly rated: people complain that they don’t have Argentine pesos! I’ll update the article if we get a chance to test.

To illustrate all this, here are the different rates observed on January 24, 2024.

Source	Rate
Official rate	€1 = ARS 893.86
Rate blue dollar	€1 = ARS 1,297.64
Payment with a Visa card	€1 = ARS 1,227.78
Exchange via Western Union	€1 = ARS 1,394.95

There’s a 56% difference between the official rate and the rate we get with Western Union! Make sure you never get the official rate!

EDIT currency exchange (March 2024): Needing a bit of cash to finish our stay and not feeling like queuing for Western Union, I went to a currency exchange to change 50 € and got a very fair rate.

I got an exchange rate of 1 € = 1,030 ARS while the blue rate was 1,060 ARS. That’s a spread of 3%.