World Currency Symbols: The Complete List

World currency symbols are the shorthand marks for money: $ £ € ¥ ₹ ₽ and dozens more. To type one on Windows, hold Alt and enter the symbol’s decimal code on the numeric keypad, like Alt+0163 for £ or Alt+0128 for €. On Mac, use an Option shortcut or the Character Viewer. The full list is below.

Click any symbol above to copy it. If you just need the glyph and not the keystrokes, that is the fastest route, and the copy-and-paste symbols tool holds the rest.

World currency symbols quick reference

One table, every code. The Alt column is decimal for the numeric keypad. The Unicode column is hex, which is the number Word’s Alt+X and a Chromebook’s Ctrl+Shift+U expect. Do not swap them: the two numbers are different, and feeding a hex value into an Alt code gives the wrong character or nothing.

Plenty of currencies have no unique symbol of their own. The Swiss franc is written CHF or “Fr.”, the Scandinavian currencies use “kr”, and most Latin American pesos share the same $ as the dollar. When there is no glyph, the three-letter ISO code is the standard.

Type currency symbols on Windows

1. Turn on Num Lock.
2. Hold the Alt key.
3. Type the decimal code on the numeric keypad, not the number row across the top.
4. Release Alt. The symbol appears.

Alt codes need that separate numeric keypad. Laptops without one can turn to the emoji panel or Character Map instead, or just use the copy buttons above.

The leading zero matters. Alt+0128 gives €. Alt+128 without the zero gives Ç on a US machine, because the zero-less codes read from your computer’s old OEM code page. That page is CP437 in the US and CP850 across the UK, Ireland, Canada and Australia, so the same zero-less code can produce different characters for different readers. The leading-zero form always points at the modern Western set. Use it for anything going into a document.

The codes above 255 (₹, ₽, ₩ and the rest) are entered the same way, as their full decimal value. They work in Word and most current apps but can be hit-or-miss in older ones. If a code does nothing, fall back to Word’s Alt+X or a paste. For the newer symbols you can also press Win+. to open the emoji panel, then switch to the Symbols tab, or open Character Map (search “charmap”) and pick from the full font.

Type currency symbols on Mac

Mac has no Alt codes. The four common Western symbols have Option shortcuts: Option+4 for ¢, Option+3 for £, Option+Shift+2 for €, and Option+Y for ¥. Everything else comes from the Character Viewer.

1. Press Control+Command+Space to open the Character Viewer.
2. Search the currency’s name, like “rupee”, “won” or “naira”.
3. Double-click the symbol to drop it into your text.

Those Option shortcuts assume a US keyboard layout. On a British layout € is Option+2 and the $ sits elsewhere, so if a shortcut prints the wrong character, use the Character Viewer and skip the guessing.

Word, and the same route in PowerPoint

Word gives you the widest set of options. Two are worth knowing.

• Alt+X: type the hex code from the table, then press Alt+X. So 20b9 then Alt+X becomes ₹. This also works in Outlook and OneNote. It does not work in Excel, PowerPoint or Google Docs.
• Insert > Symbol: go to Insert > Symbol > More Symbols, set the Subset to Currency Symbols, and pick. This same Insert > Symbol menu works in PowerPoint and Excel, so there is nothing extra to learn for slides.

If you type a symbol constantly, set an AutoCorrect entry (File > Options > Proofing > AutoCorrect Options) so a short trigger expands to the glyph.

Excel, Google Docs and Google Sheets

In Excel, the cleanest way is a formula: =UNICHAR(8364) returns €, =UNICHAR(8377) returns ₹. UNICHAR takes the decimal Unicode value, the same number as the Alt code without its leading zero. Insert > Symbol works too.

Google Docs has its own picker: Insert > Special characters, where you can search by name or draw the shape to find it. Google Sheets has no such menu, whatever some guides claim. In Sheets, use =UNICHAR(8364), or type the symbol elsewhere and paste it in. If you want to use an OS input method inside a cell, press F2 first to enter edit mode.

iPhone and Android

On the phone keyboard, switch to the numbers-and-symbols view and press and hold the currency key. A row of alternatives pops up: $, ¢, €, £, ¥, ₩ and a few more. Slide to the one you want and release. Gboard on Android behaves the same way.

For a symbol that is not in that popup, like ₹ or ₽, set up a text shortcut. On iPhone that is Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement. Paste the symbol as the phrase, give it a trigger like “rupee”, and it types itself from then on.

Chromebook

ChromeOS has no Alt codes, and plugging in a USB numpad will not change that, because Alt codes are a Windows feature rather than keypad hardware. Use the Unicode shortcut instead.

1. Press Ctrl+Shift+U. An underlined u appears.
2. Type the hex code from the table, like 20a9 for ₩. No U+ prefix.
3. Press Enter or Space.

You can also open the symbol picker with Launcher+Shift+Space, or the dedicated Quick Insert key on newer models. Some web text fields swallow the Ctrl+Shift+U shortcut. When that happens, paste is the fallback.

Notion, Slack, Discord and Canva

None of these has a currency-symbol shortcut. The honest answer is to paste from the copy buttons above, then make it permanent if you need it often. Notion and Slack both respect the text-replacement rules you set in your operating system, so a shortcut like “:naira:” expanding to ₦ carries across them. In Canva, add the symbol inside a text box using the same paste. Discord will render any of these characters fine once pasted; it just does not offer them from a menu.

HTML and CSS for currency symbols

On the web, the five oldest symbols have named entities: $, ¢, £, € and ¥. The rest use numeric references. HTML accepts both bases: ₹ is decimal and ₹ is hex, with that telltale x. Both render ₹.

In CSS, escape the hex code point with a backslash: content: "\20B9";. Serve the page as UTF-8 and the plain characters work directly in your markup, which is usually simpler than entities.

Troubleshooting currency symbols

A box (□) or a question mark where the symbol should be. The font lacks that glyph. The newer symbols are the usual victims: ₹ was added to Unicode in 2010, ₽ in 2014 and ₿ in 2017, so older fonts and older systems never got them. Switch to a current font such as Segoe UI, Arial or Noto, and the box disappears.

€ shows up as Ç. You typed Alt+128 without the leading zero. Use Alt+0128.

Garbled text like € or £. That is an encoding mismatch: a UTF-8 file read as Windows-1252. Save and serve the file as UTF-8 and it resolves.

The rupee looks wrong. Two symbols get mixed up. ₹ (U+20B9) is the modern Indian rupee. ₨ (U+20A8) is the older generic rupee sign, an “Rs” ligature still used for Pakistani and Sri Lankan rupees. They are not interchangeable.

Where currency symbols are used

Prices, invoices, financial statements, exchange-rate tables, and any writing that quotes an amount in a specific currency. Placement is not universal: English puts the symbol before the number ($20), while French, German and much of Europe put it after (20 €). When a currency has no symbol, the ISO code does the job, as in “CHF 20” for Swiss francs.

Related currency symbols

• The cent symbol (¢) is the fraction partner of the dollar, and it hides behind Option+4 on a Mac.
• The Swiss franc (CHF) is the classic example of a currency with no unique glyph, written as a code instead.
• The Nigerian naira (₦) is one of the high-code-point symbols that needs Alt+8358 or a paste.
• The Chinese yuan (¥) shares its symbol with the Japanese yen, which is why the table lists ¥ for both.
• The Russian ruble (₽) is a 2014 addition, so it is a common culprit for the box-instead-of-symbol problem.

Related guides

• Browse the full currency symbols category for a guide to every individual sign.
• Grab any glyph fast from the copy-and-paste symbols tool.