Denomination (currency)

When dealing with money, denomination is the value of the individual currency.

For example a one dollar bill, a 100 dollar bill, a penny and a quarter are all different denominations of money. A one dollar bill and a one dollar coin are the same denomination as they are the same value.

Monetary union

When countries form a monetary union, redenomination may be required and the conversion ratio is often not a nice even number, or even less than 1.

New unit	=	x	Old unit	year	Monetary union
Austro-Hungarian krone	=	0.5	gulden/forint	1892	Latin Monetary Union
euro	=	0.787564	Irish pound	1999/2002	Eurozone
euro	=	40.3399	Luxembourgish francs	1999/2002	Eurozone
This table is not exhaustive.

Decimalisation

When countries that had a "pound (£) - shilling (s) - pence (d)" (£sd) currency system converted to a system which had pounds (£) and pennies (p) or dollars ($) and cents (¢) it was called decimalisation. In the £sd system, £1 = 20s and 1s = 12d, so £1 = 240d. However in the new systems £1 = 100p or $1 = 100¢ or 100c - a decimal-based system, hence the word "decimalised".

Country	New unit	=	x	Old unit	=	New minor unit	year
Australia	Australian dollar	=	0.5	Australian pound	=	100¢	1966
Ireland	Irish pound	=	1.0	Irish pound	=	100p	1971
New Zealand	New Zealand dollar	=	0.5	New Zealand pound	=	100¢	1967
South Africa	South African rand	=	0.5	South African pound	=	100c	1961
United Kingdom	British pound	=	1.0	British pound	=	100p	1971
This table is not exhaustive.

Related pages

• Inflation