Currency Symbols

One block, plus a few survivors

Most currency symbols live in the Currency Symbols block, U+20A0 to U+20CF, which Unicode created so that new signs could be added as countries adopted them. The older signs are scattered elsewhere because they came from earlier character sets: $ is plain ASCII, while ¢ £ ¤ ¥ are in the Latin-1 range inherited from the 1980s. ฿ (baht) is in the Thai block and ৳ (taka) is in the Bengali block, because those scripts had a currency sign already when Unicode was built.

This has practical consequences. Some signs are available in nearly any font, and others may not appear in older fonts. The newer the sign, the more likely it is to show as a box on an old device.

The currencies and their signs

Two entries need a note. The yen sign is also commonly used for the Chinese yuan, so ¥ is shared between the two currencies. And the rupee: ₨ (RUPEE SIGN, U+20A8) is a generic older sign used by Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal in some contexts, while ₹ is the dedicated sign for India that came into official use in 2010.

New signs and old devices

The Indian rupee sign ₹ was adopted in 2010, and the ruble sign ₽ followed after Russia’s central bank chose it in 2013, and Unicode added both soon afterwards. ₿ was added in Unicode 10, released in 2017. Devices that have not been updated for years may not have these, and show a box in their place. That is the main reason people copy a currency symbol that does not display properly: the sign exists, and the font does not.

If your audience might include old phones, write the ISO code, such as INR, RUB or BDT, next to the symbol, or instead of it. ISO 4217 codes are three letters and work everywhere.

Placing the symbol

Position is a matter of language, not of the sign. English puts $, £ and € before the amount without a space: $25, £10, €5. French, German and many other European languages put € after the amount, after a space: 25 €. Indian English uses ₹ before the number, and often uses the lakh and crore grouping, with commas after every two digits, as in ₹1,00,000. These are conventions, not Unicode rules, and the symbol itself does not change.

A non-breaking space between a number and an after-number symbol stops a line break from separating them. In HTML, the entity for it is  .

Typing currency symbols

1. Windows Alt codes. With a numeric keypad, hold Alt and type 0128 for €, 0163 for £, 0165 for ¥, 0162 for ¢ and 0164 for ¤.
2. Mac, US layout. Option and Shift and 2 types €. Option and 3 types £, Option and Y types ¥, Option and 4 types ¢.
3. Word. Type 20B9 and press Alt then X for ₹, 20BD for ₽, 09F3 for ৳ and 20BF for ₿.
4. Windows symbol panel. Press the Windows key and period and open the symbols tab, which has a currency section. On a Mac, search the Character Viewer for the currency name.
5. Phones. Long-press the $ key on the number or symbol keyboard to reveal €, £, ¥ and, depending on the keyboard, a few more.

Keyboard layouts differ by country, so these shortcuts assume US keyboards. On UK, German and Indian keyboards, dedicated keys or AltGr combinations may exist for €, £ and ₹. Check your layout.

Money emoji

The fourth group has colour emoji for money: 💰 (MONEY BAG), 💵 (BANKNOTE WITH DOLLAR SIGN) and its siblings for euro, pound and yen, 💸 (MONEY WITH WINGS), 🪙 (COIN) and 💳 (CREDIT CARD). They suit social posts and chat messages. They do not belong in prices, invoices or any text that a system reads, because they cannot be parsed as currency.

Prices, search and accessibility

A screen reader reads $25 as “twenty-five dollars” in most cases, so the real signs are well supported. Less common signs may be read by name, such as “Bengali rupee sign”, and the name is not always the common one. For a Bangladeshi audience, write “৳500 (BDT)” the first time and the audience gets both. In web forms, prefer a field that lets the user choose a currency code, not one that expects a typed symbol. The fancy text accessibility guide is about stylised text, but the same reading-by-name principle applies. Avoid fancy Unicode styles for numbers and currency, because search engines and screen readers will not read a styled digit as a number.

Boxes and fallback

If a sign appears as a box, see why fancy text shows boxes. Related utility pages include copyright and trademark symbols and degree symbols.