Escudo

The Escudo was the official currency of Portugal prior to the introduction of the Euro in January 1, 2002. 100 centavos made up one escudo. Its symbol was the cifrão, similar to a dollar sign ($) but with two vertical bars instead of one. Amounts in escudos were written as escudos$centavos with the cifrão as the decimal separator (e.g. 25$00 means 25 escudos, 100$50 means 100 escudos and 50 centavos). Inflation made centavos essentially useless and centavo coins were eventually withdrawn from circulation (the 2$50 coin was the last one with a fractional value in escudos). Prior to elimination of local currencies and at the time of conversion, the exchange rate was 200.482 escudos to one Euro.

The ISO 4217 code of the escudo was PTE.

Escudo is Portuguese for "shield".