in Thailand, with the Thailand Baht as the counter (or quote) currency. Note that the code for the
South Korean won is displayed incorrectly; it should be .
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==