ISO 4217 currency codes (USD, EUR, GBP)

How to read it

SIX, which operates the infrastructure of the Swiss and Spanish financial centres, is the official maintenance agency for ISO 4217, working for the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and its Swiss member, the Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV). It keeps the code lists up to date and publishes them online free of charge. In SIX’s explanation, the first two letters of a code are the country’s two-letter ISO code and the third, wherever possible, is the first letter of the currency’s name: in CHF, CH is Switzerland and F the franc. EUR, for the euro, is one of the exceptions. Each currency also has a three-digit number, which is the same as the country’s ISO numeric code where possible: 840 is the USA, and so the US dollar.

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Codes and signs

A sign such as the dollar sign is shared by many currencies; a code belongs to one. Unicode advises software that needs to know exactly which currency is meant to use the ISO 4217 codes rather than a sign, and notes that some currencies have no sign at all and are written with letters, such as Sfr for the Swiss franc. The European Union writes EUR when referring to amounts without the € symbol, and the US Government Publishing Office’s style manual writes USD15,000, adding USD where leaving it out would cause confusion.

Common codes

Codes that are not national currencies

The list also has codes for things that are not a country’s money: XAU for gold, XAG for silver, XTS for testing, and XXX for transactions where no currency is involved.