ISO 4217

History

In 1973, the ISO Technical Committee 68 decided to develop codes for the representation of currencies and funds for use in any application of trade, commerce or banking. At the 17th session (February 1978), the related UN/ECE Group of Experts agreed that the three-letter alphabetic codes for International Standard ISO 4217, "Codes for the representation of currencies and funds", would be suitable for use in international trade.

Over time, new currencies are created and old currencies are discontinued. Such changes usually originate from the formation of new countries, treaties between countries on shared currencies or monetary unions, or redenomination from an existing currency due to excessive inflation. As a result, the list of codes must be updated from time to time. The ISO 4217 maintenance agency is responsible for maintaining the list of codes.

Types of codes

National currencies

In the case of national currencies, the first two letters of the alpha code are the two letters of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code and the third is usually the initial of the currency's main unit. So Japan's currency code is : "JP" for Japan and "Y" for yen. This eliminates the problem caused by the names dollar, franc, peso, and pound being used in many countries, each having significantly differing values.

In some cases, the third letter of the alpha code is not the initial letter of a currency unit name. There may be a number of reasons for this:

• It is considered important that the code of a completely new currency be highly mnemonic if possible. An example is the assignment of the code to the euro. ISO 4217 amendment 94, which created this code, states "The code element 'EU' has been reserved by the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency for use within ISO 4217 where 'R' has been appended to make an acceptable mnemonic code." Here the R comes from the third letter in the word "euro".
• The currency in question is replacing another currency of the same name, due to revaluation. So that the two currencies have different codes, a different third letter must be chosen for the code of the new currency. In some cases, the third letter is the initial for "new" in that country's language, to distinguish it from an older currency that was revalued; the code sometimes outlasts the usage of the term "new" itself (for example, the code for the Mexican peso is , reflecting its 1993 revaluation). Another solution to a revalued currency having the same name as its predecessor is to choose a third letter which results in a 3-letter code with mnemonic significance. For example, the Russian ruble changed from to following a revaluation, where the B comes from the third letter in the word "ruble".

X currencies (funds, precious metals, supranationals, other)

In addition to codes for most active national currencies ISO 4217 provides codes for "supranational" currencies, procedural purposes, and several things which are "similar to" currencies:

• Codes for the precious metals gold (XAU), silver (XAG), palladium (XPD), and platinum (XPT) are formed by prefixing the element's chemical symbol with the letter "X". These "currency units" are defined as one troy ounce of the specified metal.
• The code XTS is reserved for use in testing.
• The code XXX is used to denote a "transaction" involving no currency.
• There are also codes specifying certain monetary instruments used in international finance, e.g. XDR is the symbol for special drawing right issued by the International Monetary Fund.
• The codes for most supranational currencies, such as the East Caribbean dollar, the CFP franc, the CFA franc BEAC, and the CFA franc BCEAO. The predecessor to the euro, the European Currency Unit (ECU), had the code XEU.

The use of the initial letter "X" for these purposes is facilitated by the ISO 3166 rule that no official country code beginning with X will ever be assigned.

The inclusion of the EU (denoting the European Union) in the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list allows the euro to be coded as EUR rather than assigned a code beginning with X, even though it is a supranational currency.

Numeric codes

ISO 4217 also assigns a three-digit numeric code to each currency. This numeric code is usually the same as the numeric code assigned to the corresponding country by ISO 3166-1. For example, USD (United States dollar) has numeric code which is also the ISO 3166-1 code for "US" (United States).

List of ISO 4217 currency codes

Active codes (list one){{anchor|List of currency codes|List one|Active codes}}

The following is a list of active codes of official ISO 4217 currency names . In the standard the values are called "alphabetic code", "numeric code", "minor unit", and "entity".

According to UN/CEFACT recommendation 9, paragraphs 8–9 ECE/TRADE/203, 1996: : 8. In applications where monetary resources associated with a currency (i.e. funds) need not be specified and where a field identifier indicating currency is used, the first two (leftmost) characters are sufficient to identify a currency—example: US for United States dollars for general, unspecified purposes where a field identifier indicating currency is present. (A field identifier can be a preprinted field heading in an aligned document or a similarly-agreed application in electronic transmission of data.) : 9. In applications where there is a need to distinguish between types of currencies, or where funds are required as in the banking environment, or where there is no field identifier, the third (rightmost) character of the alphabetic code is an indicator, preferably mnemonic, derived from the name of the major currency unit or fund—example: USD for general, unspecified purposes; USN for United States dollar next-day funds, and USS for funds which are immediately available for Federal Reserve transfer, withdrawal in cash or transfer in like funds (same-day funds). Since there is no need for such a distinction in international trade applications, the funds codes have not been included in the Annex to the present Recommendation.

Historical codes

A number of currencies had official ISO 4217 currency codes and currency names until their replacement by another currency. The table below shows the ISO currency codes of former currencies and their common names (which do not always match the ISO 4217 names). That table has been introduced end 1988 by ISO. (Date formats: unless otherwise noted, dates in this table are formatted as either four digit year {YYYY} or year-month-day {YYYY-MM-DD} with padded leading zeros.)--

Currency details

Minor unit fractions {{anchor|Exponent|Minor unit|Minor unit decimals|Minor units of currency}}

The 2008 (7th) edition of ISO 4217 says the following about minor units of currency:

Examples for the ratios of :1 and :1 include the United States dollar and the Bahraini dinar, for which the column headed "Minor unit" shows "2" and "3", respectively. , two currencies have non-decimal ratios, the Mauritanian ouguiya and the Malagasy ariary; in both cases the ratio is 5:1. For these, the "Minor unit" column shows the number "2". Some currencies, such as the Burundian franc, do not in practice have any minor currency unit at all. These show the number "0", as with currencies whose minor units are unused due to negligible value.

Code position in amount formatting {{anchor|codeposition|PositionOfIso4217CodeInAmounts}}

The ISO 4217 standard does not regulate either the spacing, prefixing or suffixing in usage of currency codes. The style guide of the European Union's Publication Office declares that, for texts issued by or through the Commission in English, Irish, Latvian, and Maltese, the ISO 4217 code is to be followed by a "hard space" (non-breaking space) and the amount: :a sum of EUR 30 and for texts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish the order is reversed; the amount is followed by a non-breaking space and the ISO 4217 code: :une somme de 30 EUR As illustrated, the order is determined not by the currency but by the native language of the document context.

USD, USN: two US currency codes

The US dollar has two codes assigned: USD and USN ("US dollar next day"). The USS (same day) code is not in use any longer, and was removed from the list of active ISO 4217 codes in March 2014.

Non ISO 4217 currencies

Currencies without ISO 4217 currency codes

A number of active currencies do not have an ISO 4217 code, because they may be:

1. a minor currency pegged at par (1:1) to a larger currency, even if independently regulated,
2. a currency only used for commemorative banknotes or coins, or
3. a currency of an unrecognized or partially recognized state. These currencies include:

• Abkhazian apsar (state of issue is viewed as de jure part of Georgia)
• Alderney pound (1:1 pegged to sterling)
• Cook Islands dollar (1:1 pegged to the New Zealand dollar)
• Faroese króna (1:1 pegged to the Danish krone)
• Guernsey pound (1:1 pegged to sterling)
• Isle of Man pound (1:1 pegged to sterling)
• Jersey pound (1:1 pegged to sterling)
• Kiribati dollar (1:1 pegged to the Australian dollar)
• Maltese scudo (1:0.24 pegged to the euro) (Currency of the Sovereign Order of Malta; the Republic of Malta uses the euro.)
• Sahrawi peseta (pegged to the euro), sometimes given the code "EHP" but this has not been assigned by the ISO
• Somaliland shilling (state of issue is viewed as de jure part of Somalia, exchange rate not fixed)
• Transnistrian ruble (state of issue is viewed as de jure part of Moldova)
• Tuvaluan dollar (1:1 pegged to the Australian dollar) See :Category:Fixed exchange rate for a list of all currently pegged currencies.

Non-standard codes

Despite having no presence or status in the standard, three letter acronyms that resemble ISO 4217 coding are sometimes used locally or commercially to represent de facto currencies or currency instruments.

The following non-ISO codes were used in the past.

Unofficial codes for minor units of currency

Minor units of currency (also known as currency subdivisions or currency subunits) are often used for pricing and trading company shares and other assets, such as energy, but are not assigned codes by ISO 4217. Two conventions for representing minor units are in widespread use:

• Replacing the third letter of the ISO 4217 Code of the parent currency with an upper-case "X". Examples are GBX for the US Cent, EUX for the Euro Cent.
• Replacing the third letter of the ISO 4217 Code of the parent currency with the first letter of the name of a minor unit, using lower-case. Examples are GBp for Penny Sterling, USc for the US Cent, and EUc for the Euro Cent.

A third convention is similar to the second one but uses an upper-case letter, e.g. ZAC for the South African Cent.

Cryptocurrencies

Cryptocurrencies have not been assigned an ISO 4217 code. However, some cryptocurrencies and cryptocurrency exchanges use a three-letter acronym that resemble an ISO 4217 code.

Notes

References

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