To make all your floats show comma separators by default in pandas versions 0.23 through 0.25 set the following:

pd.options.display.float_format = '{:,}'.format

https://pandas.pydata.org/pandas-docs/version/0.23.4/options.html

In pandas version 1.0 this leads to some strange formatting in some cases.

pandas (as of 0.20.1) does not allow overriding the default integer format in an easy way. It is hard coded in pandas.io.formats.format.IntArrayFormatter (the lambda function):

class IntArrayFormatter(GenericArrayFormatter):

    def _format_strings(self):
        formatter = self.formatter or (lambda x: '% d' % x)
        fmt_values = [formatter(x) for x in self.values]
        return fmt_values

I'm assuming what you're actually asking for is how you can override the format for all integers: modify (i.e. "monkey patch") the IntArrayFormatter to print integer values with thousands separated by comma as follows:

import pandas

class _IntArrayFormatter(pandas.io.formats.format.GenericArrayFormatter):

    def _format_strings(self):
        formatter = self.formatter or (lambda x: ' {:,}'.format(x))
        fmt_values = [formatter(x) for x in self.values]
        return fmt_values

pandas.io.formats.format.IntArrayFormatter = _IntArrayFormatter

Note:

• before 0.20.0, the formatters were in pandas.formats.format.
• before 0.18.1, the formatters were in pandas.core.format.

Aside

For floats you do not need to jump through those hoops since there is a configuration option for it:

display.float_format: The callable should accept a floating point number and return a string with the desired format of the number. This is used in some places like SeriesFormatter. See core.format.EngFormatter for an example.

You could monkey-patch pandas.io.formats.format.IntArrayFormatter:

import contextlib
import numpy as np
import pandas as pd
import pandas.io.formats.format as pf
np.random.seed(2015)

@contextlib.contextmanager
def custom_formatting():
    orig_float_format = pd.options.display.float_format
    orig_int_format = pf.IntArrayFormatter

    pd.options.display.float_format = '{:0,.2f}'.format
    class IntArrayFormatter(pf.GenericArrayFormatter):
        def _format_strings(self):
            formatter = self.formatter or '{:,d}'.format
            fmt_values = [formatter(x) for x in self.values]
            return fmt_values
    pf.IntArrayFormatter = IntArrayFormatter
    yield
    pd.options.display.float_format = orig_float_format
    pf.IntArrayFormatter = orig_int_format


df = pd.DataFrame(np.random.randint(10000, size=(5,3)), columns=list('ABC'))
df['D'] = np.random.random(df.shape[0])*10000

with custom_formatting():
    print(df)

yields

      A     B     C        D
0 2,658 2,828 4,540 8,961.77
1 9,506 2,734 9,805 2,221.86
2 3,765 4,152 4,583 2,011.82
3 5,244 5,395 7,485 8,656.08
4 9,107 6,033 5,998 2,942.53

while outside of the with-statement:

print(df)

yields

      A     B     C            D
0  2658  2828  4540  8961.765260
1  9506  2734  9805  2221.864779
2  3765  4152  4583  2011.823701
3  5244  5395  7485  8656.075610
4  9107  6033  5998  2942.530551

you are converting to string each element : "{:,}".format(x)

but I guess you want to display your numbers in your pandas DataFrame to show comma separators by default, for this you can do it but for float data type:

pd.options.display.float_format = '{:,}'.format

if you want also for int type you should monkey-patch pandas.io.formats.format.IntArrayFormatter .

You can format your column by doing this:

df['new_column_name'] = df['column_name'].map('{:,.2f}'.format)

But keep in mind that the new column will contain strings, not floats.