Panama document photos online

In 1941 Panama briefly tried to mint its own paper money — and lasted barely a week. President Arnulfo Arias amended the constitution to let a new Central Bank of Issue print balboa banknotes in denominations up to 50, the first and only paper currency the country has ever produced. Then a military coup toppled Arias, the government shuttered the bank within days, and ordered all 2.7 million notes hurled into the furnace. The surviving "Seven Days' Notes" are now prized by collectors. Ever since, Panama has run on a currency that exists almost entirely as coins, leaning on the US dollar for everything printed.

• Currency Panama's balboa has no banknotes — it circulates only as coins, while US dollar bills serve as the country's paper money, making it one of the world's few fully dollarized economies.
• Money history The only balboa notes ever printed lasted about a week in 1941 before a coup ordered all 2.7 million of them burned, leaving the rare survivors as collectors' treasures.
• Passport power The Panamanian passport climbed to 28th on the 2025 Henley Passport Index, granting visa-free or visa-on-arrival entry to 148 destinations — the same rank it last held back in 2014.
• Citizenship Panama grants citizenship by birthright (jus soli) to almost anyone born on its soil, with the standard exception for children of foreign diplomats.
• Naturalization To naturalize, foreigners must renounce their original citizenship, prove command of Spanish, and pass an exam on Panamanian geography, history and politics after five years of residence.
• Spanish pathway Citizens of Spain or any Latin American nation get a shortcut: they can naturalize on the same terms those countries would grant a Panamanian, a reciprocity clause written into the constitution.
• Oldest city Founded in 1519, Panama City is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement on the Pacific coast of the Americas; the original Panamá Viejo was sacked by pirates in 1671.
• Currency name The balboa is named after explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa and has been pegged one-to-one with the US dollar since it was introduced in 1904, the year after independence.
• The Canal The Panama Canal opened to traffic on 15 August 1914, carving roughly fifty miles of passage across the isthmus and reshaping global shipping forever.