Official, wholesale, and card dollar: the regulated family
The three rates set in the formal banking system: how the exchange-rate band works, what the wholesale rate is for, and why card spending costs more.
Three of the rates on our board come from the formal, regulated system: the official, wholesale, and card dollars. They form a family — the card rate is built on top of the official rate, and the official retail rate is built on top of the wholesale one.
The wholesale dollar
The wholesale (mayorista) rate is where the formal FX market actually clears. It’s the rate at which banks, large companies, and the Central Bank itself transact with each other, in large volumes. Import payments, export settlements, and corporate FX operations reference this rate.
Since the 2025 reform program agreed with the IMF, the wholesale dollar floats inside a Central Bank band: the BCRA lets the price move with supply and demand between a floor and a ceiling, intervening only at the edges. That’s a fundamental change from the old regime of fixed or tightly managed rates — the official dollar now moves every day, which is why the “official” number on our board changes too.
If you deal with corporate pricing, contracts, or accounting, the wholesale rate is usually the reference that matters.
The official (retail) dollar
What most people call “the official dollar” is the retail rate — the price a bank shows an individual customer. It’s the wholesale rate plus the bank’s spread. This is the rate you get when you buy dollars legally at a bank as an individual, subject to whatever rules apply to your situation.
During the strict cepo years, official access for individuals was capped at small monthly amounts, which is precisely what pushed demand into the blue, MEP, and crypto markets. Access today is much easier for individuals; for companies, access still depends on the type of transaction — imports, services, dividends, and debt payments each have their own documentation requirements under BCRA rules.
The card dollar
The card (tarjeta) dollar is what an Argentine actually pays when using a peso card abroad or for foreign online purchases — streaming subscriptions included. It’s not a separate market: it’s the official rate plus taxes collected on foreign-currency card spending.
That’s why it’s consistently the most expensive dollar on our board. The gap between the card rate and the official rate is purely fiscal — it’s the tax wedge, not a market price. For travelers this creates a familiar calculation: paying with a card at the card rate versus bringing dollars obtained at the MEP or blue rate. When the card rate is far above the financial rates, cash wins; when the gap narrows, cards become competitive again.
Reading the three together
- Wholesale: the true price of the formal market — watch it to understand policy.
- Official retail: wholesale plus bank spread — the individual’s legal price.
- Card: official plus taxes — the consumer’s price for foreign spending.
None of these tells you what the market thinks the peso is worth under stress — that’s what the financial and parallel rates are for. But they define the legal baseline that every other dollar in Argentina is measured against.