Centavo

The centavo (Spanish and Portuguese 'one hundredth') is a fractional monetary unit that represents one hundredth of a basic monetary unit in many countries around the world.¹ The term comes from Latin centum (lit. 'one hundred'), with the added suffix -avo ('portion').

Coins of various denominations of centavos have been made from copper, stainless steel, aluminum-bronze, and silver.²

Places that currently use the centavo include:

• Argentine peso
• Bolivian boliviano
• Brazilian real
• Cape Verdean escudo
• Colombian peso
• Cuban peso
• Dominican peso
• East Timorese centavo coins
• Ecuadorian centavo coins
• Guatemalan quetzal
• Honduran lempira
• Macanese avos
• Mexican peso
• Mozambican metical
• Nicaraguan córdoba
• Philippine peso (In English usage; sentimo or céntimo is used in Tagalog and Spanish respectively.)

• 
  50 Philippine centavos (1964) of the English series.
• 
  10 Philippine centavos (1945), from the Commonwealth period.
• 
  1 Brazilian centavo (2003), no longer produced.
• 
  1 sentimo coin (2002), from the BSP series

Former forms of the centavo that are no longer in use include:

• Brazilian cruzeiro (from 1942 to 1986 and from 1990 to 1993)
• Brazilian cruzado (from 1986 to 1989)
• Brazilian cruzado novo (from 1989 to 1990)
• Costa Rican colón (Between 1917 and 1920 only. As céntimo for other periods.)
• Ecuadorian sucre (New centavo coins continued to circulate after the sucre was replaced by U.S. dollar in 2000.)
• Salvadoran colón
• Guinea Bissau peso
• Mozambican escudo
• Portuguese escudo (before the euro was introduced)
• Portuguese Guinean escudo
• Portuguese Indian escudo
• Puerto Rican peso
• São Tomé and Príncipe escudo
• Venezuelan venezolano
• Venezuelan peso
• Chilean Cent (from 1975 to 1983, as a subdivision of the Chilean peso; out of circulation due to inflation³)