Currency Symbols - (List of world's currencies)

What is the currency?

The invention of paper money allowed for rapid development of the global economy, as people finally didn’t have to carry all of the good and heavy gold with them while traveling. The banks and remote money transfers have come later naturally. Currency is basically a medium of exchange for goods and services. In today’s world most of the money transfers take place online. In most stores you can pay easily with a special card or just your smartphone and we are heading into a fully cashless era. The development of blockchain technology, which is used to create fully digital cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin may be the next step in the evolution of how we perceive money and conduct transfers and exchanges.

How many currencies are there in the World?

According to the United Nations reports, there are currently 180 currencies, which are widely recognized and used. The US Dollar is one of the most popular, as it’s used in more than 30 countries. Some countries even connect their currency’s value directly to the USD. It is the most traded currency in the world. Another popular one is Euro, which may act as Europe's alternative for USD.

Dedicated Currency Symbols

While for all of the currencies, there is a dedicated three letter shortcut, some of the currencies have also their own popular symbol, which makes it easy to recognize this currency. You can easily type and paste it into your texts, as these signs are officially and widely supported. Some should be easily accessed by using your regular keyboard shortcuts, such as shift+4 for the USD: “$” sign. You can also use it’s unicode: U+00024, or HTML code: &#x24, or HEX value: &#36. Each currency sign has its own values.

Cryptocurrency dedicated symbols

Crypto market is still in a very young stage and the blockchain technology, which is used to transfer the digital money securely and cheaply hasn’t yet been widely adopted. Yet, some of the coins have gained enough popularity and adapted their symbols. The most notable example is Bitcoin, the first and most popular cryptocurrency, which got its own symbol added to the symbol standard. You can use the “₿” like a regular character in most text editors and websites.

Below you can find a list of all currency symbols, which countries they are from and their special three-letter shortcuts. These shortcuts are often used when you buy currencies on forex markets.

List of currency symbols: Europe

List of currency symbols: Middle East and Africa

List of currency symbols: The Americas

List of currency symbols: Asia & The Pacific region