Bank of Botswana Exchange Rate API: Official BWP Rates as JSON

The Bank of Botswana publishes the official exchange rates that accounting, tax, and customs rules in Botswana reference — published official rates, not moving market prices. This guide shows how to pull them as JSON: via a REST endpoint or the zero-dependency bob-exchange-rate npm package.

What the Bank of Botswana publishes

• The daily official pula table — USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, ZAR, CNH and the SDR, as the bank itself quotes them.
• Crawling-band context — the pula is managed against a basket, and this is the official print of where it stands.
• The bank's own publication date on every response, so a rate is always citable.
• No gaps to trip over — weekends and Botswana holidays resolve to the most recent published rates and are flagged explicitly.

Botswana runs one of Africa's most disciplined currency regimes — a crawling band against a rand/SDR basket — and the Bank of Botswana daily table is its official record, rand cross included.

Why official rates, not market rates

A live mid-market feed answers "what is USD/BWP trading at right now?" — the right tool for checkouts and dashboards. But accountants, auditors, and tax authorities ask a different question: "which rate were you required to use for this date?" That answer comes from the Bank of Botswana's published rates, and it never changes after publication.

Get the latest rates (REST)

curl "https://allratestoday.com/api/v1/central-bank/bob/latest" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY"

The response is the bank's most recent published data — every rate and the publication date. The latest rates are available on every plan, including the free tier (300 requests/month, no credit card).

The npm SDK

npm install bob-exchange-rate

import { getRate, getLatestRates } from 'bob-exchange-rate';

// One pair at the official Bank of Botswana rate
const pair = await getRate('USD', 'BWP', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
console.log(pair.rate, pair.rate_date);

// The bank's full published table
const table = await getLatestRates({ apiKey: 'art_live_...' });
console.log(table.rate_date, table.rates.length);

Zero dependencies, TypeScript types included, and it runs anywhere fetch exists — Node 18+, Bun, Deno, and edge runtimes.

Historical rates for an invoice date

import { getRatesForDate, getHistory } from 'bob-exchange-rate';

// The official rates for an invoice date — non-publication days return
// the most recent published date, flagged via published_on_requested_date.
const day = await getRatesForDate('2026-06-30', { apiKey: 'art_live_...' });

// Time series for one pair
const series = await getHistory(
  { source: 'USD', target: 'BWP', from: '2026-01-01' },
  { apiKey: 'art_live_...' }
);

Historical dates and time series need a paid plan; the latest rates stay free.

Published vs derived pairs

If the Bank of Botswana does not print a pair directly, the API resolves it from the bank's published rates — an inverse, or a cross rate via BWP — and flags it derived: true with the method used. Official and computed values are never silently mixed, which is exactly the distinction an auditor will ask about.

A fresh official series

The bank publishes each day as its own page with no enumerable archive, so our series accumulates from August 2026 forward — every business day's official table, stored with its date.

FAQ

Does the Bank of Botswana have an official exchange rate API?

The Bank of Botswana publishes its official rates on its own site, and AllRatesToday serves the same published rates as clean JSON via REST or the bob-exchange-rate npm package. The latest table is free.

How often do Bank of Botswana rates update?

Once per business day. The bank quotes the pula against each currency (foreign per pula); the API serves both directions, with derived inversions flagged. Every response carries the publication date.

Can I get the Bank of Botswana rate for a past date, like an invoice date?

Yes. The /central-bank/bob/rates-for-date endpoint returns the official rates for any archived date. Non-publication days resolve to the most recent published date and are flagged, so your audit trail stays honest. Historical dates require a paid plan; latest rates are free.