World currencies

Most countries have their own currencies, but not all. Many Caribbean island nations, such as Saint Lucia and Dominica, use the same East Caribbean dollar. Likewise, a number of African nations, including Chad and Niger, use the Communaute Financiere Africaine franc. Often the territories or dependencies of a country use the governing country's currency -- for example, the Virgin Islands and Guam use the United States dollar. The CIA World Factbook, shows 178 different currencies in use, but on February 28, 2002 the European national bank notes and coins were withdrawn from circulation in favor of the Euro -- adding 1 currency while eliminating 12. To find out which currency is used in a particular country, start at the countries of the world. Nowadays ISO have introduced a system, ISO 4217 using three-letter codes to define currency, in order to remove the confusion that there are dozens of currencies called the Dollar and many called the Franc. Even the Pound is used in nearly a dozen different countries, all of course, with wildly differing values. In general the three-letter code uses the ISO 3166-1 country code for the first two letters, and the first letter of the name of the currency (D for dollar for instance) as the third letter (Currency codes: zipped Excel file - 192 kb).