ISO currency codes

ISO currency codes are identifiers for currencies made up of three alphabetic characters as specified in ISO 4217 issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The most recent edition is ISO 4217:2008.

The first two characters are country identifiers taken from from ISO 3166 and the third specifies the particular currency or type of funds.

Used within SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) messages, ISO currency codes are often referred to as SWIFT codes.

Examples of an ISO currency code (SWIFT code) are USD for United States dollar and CHF for the Swiss franc (the CH abbreviation for the Swiss Confederation standing for Confoederatio Helvetica, its Latin name).

ISO 4217 also provides numeric codes for currencies for use in countries that do not use the Roman alphabet. The numeric code for the US dollar is 840 and the Swiss franc is 756.

The full list of codes is available at http://www.currency-iso.org/en/home/tables/table-a1.html.

See also

• Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications

Other links

• International Organization for Standardization - http://www.iso.org/iso/home.htm