Currency Codes

About ISO 4217 Currency Codes

What the letters and numbers in the table above mean, and who maintains them.

ISO 4217 is the international standard that gives every world currency a unique three-letter alphabetic code and a matching three-digit numeric code. It is published by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and maintained by its appointed maintenance agency, SIX Group, which keeps the official “List One” of active codes up to date as currencies are introduced, redenominated or withdrawn. Banks, card networks, airlines and foreign-exchange markets all quote prices and settle payments using these codes, so an amount is never ambiguous about which currency it is in.

Alphabetic codes

The three-letter code is the one you see on price boards and currency converters. In most cases its first two letters are the country’s ISO 3166 code and the third is the initial of the currency’s name — USD is US + Dollar, JPY is JP + Yen. Codes that do not belong to a single country begin with X: supranational currencies such as XOF, the West African CFA franc, and precious metals such as XAU, gold.

Numeric codes

Each currency also carries a three-digit numeric code, shown in the Number column above. Where possible it matches the country’s ISO 3166-1 numeric code — 840 for the US dollar, 392 for the Japanese yen. Numeric codes are used where Latin letters are impractical, such as in electronic payment messages and in countries that do not use Latin script.

Minor units

For every currency the standard also defines its minor unit — how many decimal places an amount can have. Most currencies have two, like the 100 cents in a dollar or euro; the Japanese yen has none; a few, such as the Bahraini and Kuwaiti dinars, divide into 1,000 fils and so have three. Payment systems use the minor unit to know how to round and display amounts correctly.

Currencies without a live rate

19 of the codes in the table above appear as plain text rather than a link, because FxRates has no exchange rate to show for them. Most are not really currencies traded on open markets: gold, silver, platinum and palladium (XAU, XAG, XPT, XPD) are priced as commodities, not currencies; the IMF’s Special Drawing Right (XDR) and a handful of regional accounting units (XAD, XSU, XUA) exist only for settling balances between institutions; and several — Chile’s Unidad de Fomento (CLF), Uruguay’s indexed units (UYI, UYW) and similar codes — are inflation-linked units of account, not spendable money. Two, however, are real national currencies FxRates simply does not price yet: the South Sudanese pound (SSP) and Venezuela’s bolívar soberano (VED).

The table above lists the alphabetic and numeric code of every active ISO 4217 currency. Use the search box to filter by country, currency name or code, and click any linked code to jump straight to that currency’s live exchange rate.