Alternately, it could be from 10 and 5 céntimo coins of the Spanish peseta, known as the perra gorda and perra chica. Pera is thought to be from Malay perak (silver), which also has a direct cognate or adaptation in Tagalog/Filipino as pilak. Alternately, it could be from Arabic asrafi (a gold coin, see Persian ashrafi) or sarf (money, money exchange).

Salapi is thought to be from isa (one) + rupya which would become lapia when adapted to Tagalog. Two native Tagalog words for money which survive today in Filipino were salapi and possibly pera. The original silver currency unit was the rupya or rupiah, brought over by trade with India and Indonesia. Gold, which was plentiful in many parts of the islands, invariably found its way into these objects that included the Piloncitos, small bead-like gold bits considered by the local numismatists as the earliest coin of the ancient peoples of the Philippines, and gold barter rings. The inconvenience of barter, however, later led to the use of some objects as a medium of exchange. The trade the pre-colonial tribes of what is now the Philippines did among themselves with its many types of pre-Hispanic kingdoms ( kedatuans, rajahnates, wangdoms, lakanates and sultanates) and with traders from the neighboring islands was conducted through barter. Piloncitos, a type of coin used by the pre-colonial peoples of the archipelago

American dollar to php