The Cuban peso (peso cubano in Spanish, ISO 4217 code: CUP) also known as moneda nacional (Spanish for 'national currency'), is the official currency of Cuba.

The Cuban peso was established by a Cuban law on October 29, 1914. It began circulating in 1915 at parity with the U.S. dollar until 1959-1960. The Castro government then introduced the socialist planned economy and pegged the peso to the Soviet ruble.

The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 resulted in a Special Period of difficult economic adjustments for Cuba. From 1994 to 2020 the Cuban peso co-circulated with the Cuban convertible peso (ISO 4217 code "CUC"; colloquially pronounced "kook" in contrast to the CUP, often pronounced "koop"), which was convertible to and fixed against the U.S. dollar, and which was generally available to the public at a rate of US$1 = CUC 1 = CUP 25. State enterprises under the socialist planned economy, though, were entitled to exchange CUPs into CUCs and U.S. dollars at the official, subsidized rate of US$1 = CUC 1 = CUP 1, within prescribed limits.

From 1 January 2021, Cuba implemented the so-called "Day Zero" of monetary unification, which abolished the Cuban convertible peso as well as the 1 CUP/USD rate for state enterprises. Henceforth the Cuban Peso became the only legal tender in Cuba, CUCs were converted at the rate of 24 CUP/CUC, and a single official exchange rate of 24 CUP/USD became applicable for both public and private transactions. However, demand for hard currency made these exchange rates unavailable in the informal market, where 1 USD is worth over 400 CUP as of August 2025^[update].

Before 1857, Spanish and Spanish colonial reales circulated in Cuba. From 1857, banknotes were issued specifically for use on Cuba. These were denominated in pesos, with each peso worth 8 reales. From 1869, decimal notes were also issued denominated in centavos, with 100 centavos for each Spanish peso. The Republic of Cuba did not have its own currency until 1915 (Cuban peso), when the first coins of Cuban peso were minted; the first banknotes (silver certificate) were issued in 1935. The Cuban peso and the US dollar had the same value from 1915 to 1959-1960.

In 1960, the peso lost value after the United States imposed an embargo against Cuba and the suspended sugar quota. Fidel Castro then introduced the socialist planned economy to Cuba with the Soviet Union as its new economic partner, and the Cuban peso was pegged to the Soviet ruble at the same exchange rate as with the US dollar (i.e. at 4 old rubles before the 1961 monetary reform, and 0.9 SUR (90 kopeks of the new ruble) afterward).

Foreign exchange was a government monopoly under the socialist planned economy and could not be bought by the general public using Cuban pesos. Foreign currencies were therefore exchanged for coins of the Instituto Nacional de Turismo (INTUR) from 1981 to 1989 and for foreign exchange certificates of the Banco Nacional de Cuba from 1985. These coins or certificates were then used by visitors to buy some luxury goods not available for purchase in the national currency.

The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 resulted in a difficult Special Period of economic adjustments which required the acquisition of foreign exchange in order to pay for petroleum and other imported goods which used to be easily procured from Cuba's former benefactor. In 1993, the U.S. dollar was made legal tender to encourage much-needed hard currency to enter the economy, and the Cuban peso lost much of its value with its free market exchange rate plunging to as low as 125 CUP/USD.