Chile applies no exchange restrictions. Its remaining rules channel three kinds of operation through the Formal Exchange Market and require the people taking part to report them, and the compendium says expressly that anything not on that list need be neither channelled nor reported. Family support, maintenance and inheritances sit under a separate operation code.
Chile runs the outward side of its exchange rules as a statistical return. Two obligations survive from an older regime: some operations go through the Formal Exchange Market, some are reported to the Banco Central. Both reach a short list an ordinary family payment is not on, and where the list does bite the question is which route the money took rather than how large it was.
Key Takeaways
- The Banco Central records that no exchange restrictions are applied, and that those in articles 49 and 50 of its Organic Constitutional Law have been unapplied since 19 April 2001.
- The duties falling on the person making a payment are limited to an exhaustive list of three kinds of operation.
- An ordinary family payment is not on that list and carries no reporting duty on the sender under the compendium.
- Where the list does bite, the figure in an individual's return is fifty million United States dollars if the money went through the Formal Exchange Market, and ten thousand if it did not.
- The compendium these rules live in was replaced outright on 1 January 2026, and the chapters most published guidance names no longer exist.
Permission was replaced by information
Section I of Chapter I of the Compendio de Normas de Cambios Internacionales sets out the framework. The Organic Constitutional Law enshrines exchange freedom, so international exchange operations may be carried out freely by any person, subject to powers the Banco Central holds to impose restrictions and limitations. Under the floating regime it runs, the Bank applies none of them. Its compendium page dates that: the article 49 and 50 restrictions have not been applied since 19 April 2001.
The list is exhaustive, and it says so
Section V of Chapter I names the operations that must be channelled and reported. Three: assets and liabilities with abroad of banks and custodians established in Chile; the same for natural or legal persons who are not institutional investors; and derivatives with people resident abroad, plus derivatives done in Chile with Formal Exchange Market entities over foreign underlyings.
The section then closes itself explicitly. For the avoidance of doubt, it says, operations not on the list need not be channelled through the Formal Exchange Market, although they may be voluntarily, nor reported to the Banco Central.
Where does family money sit? The Bank answers through its taxonomy rather than a definition. Operating Regulation II.2's annex of operation codes gives pensions, survivors' pensions, family support, inheritances and other gifts their own code, 300601, filed in a column for foreign trade and other operations, separate from the assets and liabilities columns. A maintenance payment or a gift is not treated as a capital movement, and carries no reporting duty on the sender under this compendium.
Where the duty falls, and the two figures that decide it
The second item is where an individual meets this.
Four instruments set the arithmetic between them, and all but the third row report on a cycle rather than per payment. The Market below is the Formal Exchange Market.
| What is reported | Who files it | Figure, US dollars | How often | Where it is set |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gross accumulated change in assets or liabilities with abroad during the month, routed through the Market | The person or company | 50,000,000 | Monthly | Number 20 |
| Assets or liabilities with abroad held at any point | The person or company | 10,000,000 | Quarterly | Number 20 |
| Credits taken on from abroad | The person or company | 1,000,000 | On the operation | Number 20 |
| An increase or decrease in assets abroad not routed through the Market | The person or company, direct to the Bank | 10,000 | First ten days of the following month | Number 25 and System 6.1 |
| Every purchase, sale or transfer it handles | An exchange market entity | None | Daily, monthly if non-banking | Chapter I Section IV |
The word doing the work in the first row is accumulated. It is not a size test on one movement but a test on everything a person did in a month in assets with abroad, added together, liabilities counted separately. That makes it a rule about a repeated flow rather than a payment, and it is why a monthly family transfer never approaches it: the accumulation counts assets held abroad, not money sent to somebody who holds them.
The fourth row is where the figure moves. Operations relating to assets carried out by disposing of funds abroad, and those arising from the use or disposal of amounts invested, deposited or lent and not brought into the country, are reported by the parties who effect them directly to the Banco Central.
Same person, same kind of operation: fifty million if it went through the Formal Exchange Market, ten thousand if it did not. That is a factor of five thousand, decided by the route rather than the amount. The regime is less interested in the size of a movement than in whether it passed a supervised counter.
The three jobs the ten thousand dollar figure does
The most repeated claim about this corridor is that Chile requires anything above ten thousand dollars to be reported to the central bank. The figure is real, and it does three jobs in three places. In Chapter II's number 19 it is a scope floor, so those rules engage only at that size or more. In Information System 6.1 it is the filing trigger in the table's fourth row, and only where the money never passed through the Market. In Annex 2.2 it is a grouping ceiling, described below, deciding whether a payment is reported by name at all. None of the three is a general duty to report a transfer of that size.
One drafting inconsistency is worth knowing rather than smoothing over. The instrument is not clean about who the fifty million limb binds: Operating Regulation II.6's opening number and System 6.1's title say companies, number 20 says reporting parties, which its definitions extend to natural persons, and System 6.1's instructions say companies and persons.
What the bank files, and what labels a payment
Where a payment does go through the Market, reporting still happens, just by somebody else and on a wider basis. Chapter I, Section IV requires the purchases, sales, remittances and transfers of foreign currency made by Market entities, or through them, to be formalised and reported to the Banco Central, with no list limit and no threshold. Operating Regulation II.2 sets the pace in the table's last row: banking entities by ten in the morning of the next banking day, non-banking entities within the first five banking days of the following month.
Every payment acquires a label on the way. That regulation's Information System 2.1 requires a record for each purchase, sale or transfer using the operation codes, and code 300601 covers pensions, family support, inheritances and other gifts. On an ordinary family payment the entity assigns it. Inside the asset operations Chapter II's own Section IV covers, its number 26 goes further and makes stating the concept an express duty on the reporting party, at the moment the currency is handed over.
The grouping ceiling is the third of those three jobs. For codes in Annex 2.2, 300601 among them, an exchange market entity may group a day's transactions into one record per code, one for inflows and one for outflows, for individual transactions of up to ten thousand dollars, entering the counterparty identifier as the value 1-9 and the name as the expression for various operations. The assets and liabilities columns cannot be grouped, so capital movements are always identified. Ordinary family money, at or below that figure, may arrive in the statistics as a line with no name.
None of that is the rule about what travels with the payment itself, which is a separate regime under a separate regulator. These numbers govern a statistical return to the central bank, not the identity fields a transfer carries.
Read together, the rules are one design: Chile counts what leaves without asking anybody's permission for it, and counts family money least closely of all. The peso to Australian dollar corridor page carries the figure that payment converts at.
Which rulebook is in force
Older guidance on Chile will name Capítulo XII or Capítulo XIV. Both are gone.
Circular 1004 of 30 January 2024 records that the Banco Central, by Council Agreement 2617-03 of 25 January 2024, approved a new compendium effective 1 January 2026, with the operating regulations and Chapters I and II entering into force then. It went from fourteen chapters to two plus ten operating regulations, and the Bank still hosts the previous text under a page headed as the compendium in force until December 2025.
Both surviving chapters carry the bridge. References in laws, decrees, administrative acts or contracts to the former Chapters XII and XIV are to be understood, for all legal purposes, as made to Section IV of Letter B of Chapter II. Conventions signed under the earlier rules keep their own provisions, so this is no clean break for anybody already inside one.
Where to look next
- Receiving money from Chile - the peso to Australian dollar corridor page.
- AUD to CLP - the convert page for the pair.
- How international transfers work - the sequence a payment moves through once the Chilean end is settled.
- Understanding transfer fees - transfer costs.
Sources
- Compendio de Normas de Cambios Internacionales, Banco Central de Chile - approved by Council Agreement 2617-03 of 25 January 2024, in force from 1 January 2026: Chapter I Sections I, IV, V and VIII, the page's statement about articles 49 and 50 since 19 April 2001, and Chapter II Letter B Section IV numbers 17 to 26.
- Reglamento Operativo II.6, activos con el exterior, Banco Central de Chile - issued by Circular 1004 of 30 January 2024: numbers 1 and 3 on disposing of funds abroad, and Information System 6.1 with its ten-day window and the paired fifty million and ten thousand dollar thresholds.
- Reglamento Operativo II.2, compra-venta y transferencia de divisas, Banco Central de Chile - issued by Circular 1004, amended to Circular 1010 of 10 January 2025: the reporting deadlines, System 2.1's record-per-operation rule, Annex 2.1 code 300601, and Annex 2.2 on grouping.
- Circular N° 1004, Banco Central de Chile, 30 de enero de 2024 - the approval of the new compendium and its 1 January 2026 entry into force.
- Compendio de Normas de Cambios Internacionales vigente hasta diciembre de 2025, Banco Central de Chile - the superseded compendium, listing its fourteen chapters.
General information about what Chilean exchange regulation requires when money is sent abroad. Whether a particular movement is an asset operation, and who must report it, are questions for the paying institution and an adviser in Chile. Not financial advice, not tax advice, and not a recommendation of any product or institution. Reviewed by the Tradergy editorial team, September 2026.
Common questions
Does Chile restrict money leaving the country?
No. Chapter I of the Compendio de Normas de Cambios Internacionales records that the Banco Central maintains a floating regime under which no exchange restrictions are currently applied, and the Bank states on its compendium page that the restrictions provided for in articles 49 and 50 of its Organic Constitutional Law have not been applied since 19 April 2001. What remains are two limitations: channelling certain operations through the Formal Exchange Market, and reporting certain operations to the Bank.
Does an ordinary family payment out of Chile have to be reported?
Not by the person making it, under the exchange compendium. Section V of Chapter I lists three categories of operation that must be channelled and reported, and then says expressly that operations not on the list need not be channelled through the Formal Exchange Market, although they may be voluntarily, nor reported to the Bank. The Bank's own operation codes put pensions, family support and family inheritances in a category separate from assets and liabilities with abroad.
Is there a ten thousand dollar reporting threshold?
That figure is real but it is usually described the wrong way round, and it belongs to a narrower set of operations than people assume. Chapter II states that the rules on assets and liabilities with abroad apply only to operations of ten thousand dollars or more, which makes it a scope floor for those operations rather than a filing trigger for payments generally. Within those operations an individual's own duty to file begins at one million dollars for foreign credits, ten million for quarterly balances and fifty million for monthly flows. Family support and inheritances are coded separately and none of those figures reaches them.
What changes when the money is paid out of an account already held abroad?
The threshold changes, for the same person and the same kind of operation. Number 25 of Chapter II requires asset operations carried out by disposing of funds abroad to be reported directly to the Banco Central, in the manner set out in Operating Regulation II.6, whose Information System 6.1 sets the figure at ten thousand dollars or more where the movement was not made with funds remitted from Chile through the Formal Exchange Market. Filing is within the first ten days of the following month.
Which chapter of the compendium applies?
Chapter II, Letter B, Section IV. The compendium was replaced with effect from 1 January 2026 under Council Agreement 2617-03 of 25 January 2024, going from fourteen chapters to two plus ten operating regulations. Both surviving chapters carry a transitional provision stating that references in laws, decrees, administrative acts and contracts to the former Chapters XII and XIV are to be understood as made to that section.