If they take USD, they take $50's. No hay problema. Now, will you be able to get change without waiting 5 minutes,? Well, that's another story and exists even if you pay in pesos. And some stores, like Soriana and Home Depot, have some stupid rule, that is not always enforced, whereby your purchase must be at least half the amount of USD of the bill you are paying with. I have been known to tell them thank you very much and leave my groceries and cart at the cash register. Like who keeps a running count how many pesos you are loading in the cart, then doing the math in your head to make sure that the conversion rate divided into the cost in pesos is 50% or more of the bill with which you are paying. But Walmart and Costco are zero problems, other than 90% of the cash drawers in Cancun have insufficient money in them to make change.
What about Canadian...is everyone gonna refuse my dollars or what...I was gettin some travelers checks at the Scotiabank here on the Island and the lady told me not to bring USD...so I got some travelers checks in Canadian and ordered some pesos...what's the deal lady's and gents...
Sold a bill of goods Turpin, I would think you were sold a bill of goods by the bank. I don't know what exchange rate the banks here will give on Canadian Cash or Travellers cheques, but the Casa De Cambio posts a quote of more than a peso less than U.S. Dollars. Which is ridiculous as U.S. and Canadian Dollars are at par. Even buying pesos at a bank in Canada does not get you a good rate. I think I got about 11.21 in December when U.S. was getting about 12.30. As T.J. and other say, U.S. 50"s are readily accepted at Walmart, Chedraui, Soriano's, but do not try to use U.S. Dollars at the bus depot when booking travel within Mexico. Yesterday they gave 9.84 pesos to the dollar when Costco and Walmart gave 11.90 and 11.89. Not nice, and dumb of me to not check the rate before I booked. I just assumed they would be close to other businesses. Bring U.S. $50's and you should have no trouble whatsoever.
Are their any problems with U.S. $100's, have not had trouble in the past? I usually convert at the money exchange booth in the Hotel zone or Downtown.
Someone else will chime in, but I dont think they are accepting 100 USD bills anymore. I think it had to do with money laundering.
No banks are accepting U.S. dollars, you must exchange @ a "cambio" or get pesos @ home b/4 you leave.
I expect that probably has more to do with the fact that they can't just run around and spend those Canadian dollars locally or put them straight into a bank account here.. as they can with US dollars (there are US dollar bank accounts but I don't know about any for Canadian dollars, euros, or any other currency at least not where they wouldn't get equally screwed on the exchange) so they have an added expense to change those currencies into something they can use. Most places don't like taking 100's because they are frequently counterfeited and of high risk to smaller businesses.. but you can still spend them many places depending on who you're dealing with and just about all exchanges will take them. Some of the big stores don't like to take them for some reason but it's nothing to do with any law (so far as I know). The law limits how much you can spend in cash dollars per transaction but not what denominations you can use. It was a ridiculously low $100 per transaction which isn't even enough to cover a weekly grocery trip for a family, it's since been raised to $250, which is a little better but any bigger purchases will require that you get pesos or use a credit card...
