Country and currency codes

You may actually already use ISO country and currency codes because all national postal organizations in the world exchange international mail between them in containers carrying ISO 3166-1 codes for identification of the country of destination. In machine-readable passports, the three-letter code of ISO 3166-1 is used to determine the nationality of the user (ISO/IEC 7501-1). The Internet domain name sytems uses ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes to define country-coded Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs), e.g., France: ".fr"; Australia: ".au"; Brazil: ".br", or Japan: ".jp".

ISO 3166-1:2006 is behind most of today's computerized systems which store and process information related to countries and country names. And since most applications use ISO 3166-1 they can communicate easily. That is one of the purposes of standardization: facilitation of the exchange of goods and information.

Part 2 (Country subdivision code) of ISO 3166:2007 establishes a universal code that represents the names of the principal administrative divisions, or similar areas, of the countries, etc. included in Part 1.

The alpha-2 country code element mentioned in Part 1 is followed by a hyphen and the code element of the country subdivision name. For example, US-CA United states, California.

Currencies are identified by a code based on the ISO 3166-1 which identifies them in international transactions (ISO 4217:2001).

The International Securities Identification Number (ISO 6166:2001) is a system which allows precise identification of shares issued in one country but traded internationally.

Both the country and currency codes are widely implemented within their potential user community.

More information on the country codes including their implementation can be found on the ISO 3166 Country Codes Web site. The lists need to be kept up-to-date with political and economic changes occurring regularly.

The ISO Central Secretariat is responsible for maintaining ISO 3166, Codes for the names of countries and their subdivisions; BSI (British Standards Institution) is responsible for maintaining ISO 4217, Codes for the representation of currencies and funds.

In the spirit of promoting wider adoption of the standards, the maintenance agencies are providing the lists to the public free of charge. For any questions concerning the use of these codes or the purchase of the international Standards on which they are based, please contact the ISO Central Secretariat or BSI directly.

• List of Country codes (ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency, ISO)

• List of Currency names and codes elements

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