The ISO 4217 reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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ISO 4217

ISO 4217 is an international standard describing three letter codes to define the names of currencies established by the International Organization for Standardization or ISO. The first two letters of the code are the two letters of ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes (which are similar to those used for national top-level domains on the internet) and the third is usually the initial of the currency itself. So Japan's currency code becomes JPY -- JP for Japan and Y for yen.

This eliminates the problem caused by the names dollar, franc and pound being used in dozens of different countries, all with wildly differing values. The standard also defines the relationship between the major currency unit and any minor currency unit. Often, the minor currency unit has a value that is 1/100 of the major unit, but 1/10 or 1/1000 are also common. Some currencies do not have any minor currency unit at all. Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units setting 1 ouguiya (UM) = 5 khoums.

ISO 4217 includes codes for not only currencies, but also codes for precious metals (gold, silver, palladium and platinum; normally measured in troy ounces) and certain other entities used in international finance, e.g. Special Drawing Rights. There are also special codes allocated for testing purposes (XTS), and to indicate no currency transactions (XXX). These codes all begin with the letter "X".

Supranational currencies, such as the East Caribbean dollar, the CFP franc, the CFA franc BEAC and the CFA franc BCEAO are normally also represented by codes beginning with an "X". However, the Euro is represented by the code EUR; although EU is not an ISO 3166-1 country code, it was used anyway, and in order to do so EU was added to the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list to represent the European Union. The predecessor to the Euro, the European Currency Unit, had the code XEU.

Over time, new currencies are created and old currencies are discontinued. As a result, the list of codes must be updated from time to time. The ISO 4217 maintenance agency (MA), the British Standards Institution, is responsible for maintaining the list of codes.

Table of contents
1 Active codes
2 Obsolete Currency Codes
3 See also
4 External links

Active codes

Obsolete Currency Codes

See also

External links