Currency Symbols

Every money sign Unicode defines, in one grid: the everyday $ € £ ¥, the rupee family ₹ ₨, and marks most keyboards never carried. Place the symbol before the amount in English and after it in French or German, and pair it with the three-letter code where one dollar could be mistaken for another.

Copy and Paste Currency Symbols

Unicode marks 64 characters as currency signs, and every one of them is here — from $ € £ ¥ through the rupee family to signs for currencies that no longer exist. Alongside them sit the money emoji and the two CJK ideographs used for yuan and yen. If a money sign has a character at all, it is in this grid.

What Are Currency Symbols?

A currency symbol is a character that stands in for the name of a currency. Unicode gives most of them a formal property — General Category "Sc" — which is what makes the set countable rather than a matter of opinion. $ and ¢ came from ASCII and Latin-1, € was added when the euro was created, and the block from U+20A0 upward is where newer national signs land: ₹ in 2010 for the Indian rupee, ₺ for the Turkish lira, ₿ for bitcoin, ⃁ most recently for the Saudi riyal. A new sign usually arrives the same way: a central bank or government adopts a design, and Unicode encodes it once the monetary authority has committed to it.

¤ is the odd one. It is the generic currency sign, used as a placeholder where the specific symbol is unknown or where a document must not commit to one. ₠ is a related curiosity: an early European Commission sign that € superseded before it was ever widely used.

How to Use Currency Symbols

Where to Place Currency Symbols

English and American practice puts the symbol before the amount and closes it up to the number: $5, £20, €9.99. French, German and most of continental Europe put it after with a space: 9,99 €. Neither is wrong; they are conventions of the language rather than of the currency, so a price written for a German reader should follow the German pattern even if it is in pounds.

Currency Symbols and Currency Codes

A symbol is not the same as a code. $ is used by more than twenty countries, so a price in $ is ambiguous unless the context settles it — which is what the three-letter ISO codes are for: USD, CAD, AUD, SGD. The same applies to £, which covers sterling as well as several other pounds. Use the symbol where the currency is obvious and the code where it is not, and pair them when a document mixes several.

Typing Currency Symbols on a Keyboard

Windows reaches a handful of these directly. Hold Alt and type 0128 for €, 0163 for £, 0162 for ¢, 0165 for ¥, 0164 for ¤, 0131 for ƒ. The older DOS route reaches ¢ at 155, £ 156, ¥ 157, ₧ 158 and ƒ 159 — the peseta has a short code because that character set was designed while Spain still used it.

Everything else needs the full Unicode value: Alt and 8377 for ₹, 8369 for ₱, 8361 for ₩. In Word you can type 20B9 and press Alt+X, or use Insert then Symbol and search the currency subset if you would rather pick from a list than remember an input code. A Mac reaches € with Option+2 on a UK layout and £ with Option+3 on a US one; the Character Viewer at Ctrl+Cmd+Space covers the rest.

Currency Symbols in Word and Excel

In a spreadsheet the symbol usually belongs in the cell format rather than the text, so the value stays a number you can add up. Paste a character into a cell and you have made it a string. The exception is a label or a heading, where the character is exactly what you want.

Types of Currency Symbols

Major Currency Symbols

$ € £ ¥ ₹ ₽ ₩ ₺ ₴ ₦ ₱ ₫ ฿ cover most of what anyone needs day to day: the dollar, euro, pound, yen, Indian rupee, the ruble of Russia, the Korean won, Turkish lira, Ukrainian hryvnia, Nigerian naira, Philippine peso, Vietnamese dong and Thai baht. ₾ is the Georgian lari and ₪ the Israeli new sheqel. 元 and 円 are the Chinese and Japanese characters for yuan and yen — ideographs rather than currency signs, which is why they are wider and why ¥ is used instead in Latin text.

Rupee Currency Symbols

There is more than one rupee, and the characters differ. ₹ is the Indian rupee, designed in 2010 and encoded the same year. ₨ is the older generic rupee sign, still used for Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal. ৳ is the Bangladeshi taka and ৲ its older mark, ௹ the Tamil rupee sign, ૱ the Gujarati, and ꠸ the North Indic rupee mark.

Historic Currency Symbols

₣ ₧ ₯ ₰ ₢ ₳ ₤ ₥ ₻ ₶ ₷ are currencies that have been replaced or never circulated: the French franc, peseta, drachma, German penny, cruzeiro, austral, lira, mill, Nordic mark, livre tournois and spesmilo. They are worth keeping because historic prices still get typed, and because a character that once had a job does not stop existing when the currency does.

Fullwidth Currency Symbols

＄ ￠ ￡ ￥ ￦ are full-cell versions for use inside CJK text, where a half-width symbol would break the alignment. ﹩ is a small dollar sign from the same presentation-forms family. They are genuinely different characters rather than a text style you apply, so a fullwidth sign stays fullwidth wherever it is pasted.

Money Emoji and Currency Symbols

These money emojis are pictures rather than signs: 💰 💵 💶 💷 💴 💳 🪙 — a money bag, four banknotes, a card and a coin. They arrive in colour at a fixed size, so they suit a message rather than a price.

Best Uses for Currency Symbols

Currency Symbols in Prices and Tables

In a plain-text table the character keeps a column of prices aligned in a way an image cannot, and it survives being exported to CSV or pasted into an email. That is the main practical reason to use a real € rather than the letters EUR when space is tight. Money symbols behave here like any other text symbols: they sort, they search, and they carry through a copy without losing clarity.

Currency Symbols in Names and Messages

₿ and $ turn up in usernames and bios, and ƒ is occasionally borrowed for its shape rather than its meaning. All of these are ordinary text characters, so they take your font and your colour rather than arriving pre-drawn.

Currency Symbols Unicode Names and Codes

The Unicode currency symbols on this page are identified by code point rather than by country, which is why two currencies with the same name can have different characters and why one character can serve several countries.

The formal names are plain: € is U+20AC Euro Sign, £ U+00A3 Pound Sign, ₹ U+20B9 Indian Rupee Sign, ₿ U+20BF Bitcoin Sign, ¤ U+00A4 Currency Sign. Every Unicode character here has a code point printed beside it, so this doubles as a list of currency symbols you can look values up in rather than only copy from. Two entries carry descriptive labels instead, because their only formal names are "CJK Unified Ideograph-5143" and "-5186" — 元 and 円, which would tell a reader nothing.

ƒ is a special case worth knowing about. Unicode classes it as a letter, a Latin f with hook, not as a currency sign — yet it is the florin used for the Dutch guilder and the Aruban florin, and both legacy Windows and DOS character sets gave it a slot among the money signs. A list built purely from the currency property would miss it.

Frequently Asked Questions About Currency Symbols

What is the Swiss franc symbol?

There is not one. Unicode contains exactly one franc character, ₣ U+20A3, and it is the French franc — a currency withdrawn in 2002. Switzerland writes CHF, or Fr. in general text, and the official style is the code rather than a symbol. If you need something visual, people do borrow ₣, but it is not the Swiss franc sign because no such character exists.

What is the difference between ₹ and ₨?

₹ is the Indian rupee sign, adopted in 2010 and built from the Devanagari letter "ra" with a horizontal bar. ₨ is the older generic rupee sign and is still the right character for the Pakistani, Sri Lankan and Nepalese rupee. They are not interchangeable in Indian usage.

How do I type a currency symbol on Windows?

Alt and 0128 gives €, 0163 £, 0162 ¢, 0165 ¥, 0164 ¤, 0131 ƒ. Anything outside that short list needs the full Unicode value — 8377 for ₹, for instance — or copying the character, which is faster.

Does the symbol go before or after the number?

Before it in English and American writing, closed up: $5. After it with a space in French, German and most of continental Europe: 5 €. It follows the language of the text rather than the currency being described.

What is the ¤ symbol for?

¤ is the generic currency sign. It stands in where the specific currency is unknown or deliberately unspecified, and it appears in older software as a placeholder when a font lacks the real symbol. It is not a currency in its own right.

Why do some currency symbols show as a box?

The font has no glyph for it, so nothing can render the currency character you pasted. ⃁ for the Saudi riyal and ₿ for bitcoin are recent additions, and the Tamil, Wancho and Siyaq signs at the far end of the grid are rarer still. $ ¢ £ ¥ € are safe everywhere.

Related Collections for Currency Symbols

For the digits that go beside these signs — superscript, circled, fullwidth — see number symbols, and for the operators that go between them, math symbols. ¤ is sometimes used decoratively alongside the star symbols. Everything else is indexed at symbol collections.