2008/11/4 Andrew Cates Andrew@soschildren.org:
Come on, every bank statement of yours will tell you the ISO code of the currency your account is in, you will probably find it on every magazine that you read and so on and so on. Please don't tell me that this is such an academic thing...
This is completely untrue in England too. I have two bank accounts with two different large high street banks and have just spent five minutes looking at statements from them both. There is definitely no ISO code. I have also tried two newspapers, a utility bill, half a dozen invoices and I am none the wiser. If I was given an hour to find it offline I think I would fail (and I still have no clue what it is). I guess Google or Wikipedia would work but I have never heard of an ISO code for currency even though I have traveled to 48 countries etc etc...
I have to concur - I've just discovered that my bank statement, quite remarkably, doesn't even have the word "pounds" on it, much less a code or the £ symbol. (I hope they haven't redenominated it in ZWD when I wasn't looking)
It's intuitive when you see the code written down; I would be comfortable guessing that most people would look at 57.43 GBP and recognise it as "£57.43". But it's intuitive to go from the code to the currency but not the other way around. In the case of the UK, I suspect most people would look at U-- and then B-- before ending up at G--...
This is a particularly confusing case for the UK, though! Most countries have it a lot simpler.