The colón (named after Christopher Columbus, known as Cristóbal Colón in Spanish) is the currency of Costa Rica. The plural is colones in Spanish, but English speakers often say colons instead. The ISO 4217 code is CRC.
The symbol for the colón is a c with two slashes. The symbol is encoded at U+20A1 ₡ colon sign (HTML: ₡) and on many English language Windows keyboards using the keystrokes ALT+8353.
The colón sign is not to be confused with U+00A2 ¢ cent sign (HTML: ¢ ¢), or with the Ghanaian cedi, U+20B5 ₵ cedi sign (HTML: ₵). Nonetheless, the commonly available cent symbol '¢' is frequently used locally to designate the colón in price markings and advertisements.
The United States dollar is also accepted unofficially in many places throughout Costa Rica.
