Most Used Currencies in Transactions| ��ƽ��

Ranking of the most traded currencies in the world in 2019

Characteristic	Percentage*
U.S. dollar	88.3%
Euro	32.3%
Japanese yen	16.8%
British pound sterling	12.8%
Australian dollar	6.8%
Canadian dollar	5%
Swiss franc	5%
Chinese yuan	4.3%
Hong Kong Dollar	3.5%
New Zealand Dollar	2.1%

Download

Source

Show detailed source information?

Already a member?

Source

Release date

January 2020

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

2019

Supplementary notes

* Percentage of the average daily trading volume in the OTC (Over The Counter) market in April 2019. The sum of the percentages in the full ranking is 200 percent and not 100 percent because each transaction involves two currencies.

Citation formats

The U.S. dollar is by far the predominant currency in the international foreign exchange market, with the euro and the Japanese yen in second and third place, respectively. Although China has established itself as the second-largest economy in the world, there is still a gap between the Asian giant's weight on the international stage and that of its currency. In fact, only 4.3 percent of global transactions used the Chinese yuan, placing this currency in eighth place in the ranking.

The foreign exchange market or Forex
The foreign exchange market is a global and Over the Counter (OTC) market, meaning outside regulated markets. The volume of transactions taking place in Forex has quadrupled in the last two decades, reaching an average of nearly 6.6 trillion U.S. dollars per day in 2019. With fluctuations in demand and supply, exchange rates between different currencies also fluctuate. For example, the U.S. dollar depreciated considerably against the euro during the great financial crisis, reaching the point where in 2008 one euro could buy 1.47 U.S. dollars, although it regained value starting in 2015. While the euro has generally always had a higher value than the dollar, the exchange rate of the euro to the British pound has been around 0.85 over the last decade.

The weight of the U.S. dollar
When countries trade goods and services with each other using different currencies, they must agree on the common currency to use. The U.S. dollar enjoys a marked predominance in the global foreign exchange market, being the currency most traded. In fact, all the most traded currency pairs worldwide involve the dollar. This privileged situation is not only due to the fact that it was established as the international reference payment currency after the Bretton Woods agreements but also to its ability to maintain a stable value in the long term. Being considered a safe haven asset, many national banks hold a large part of their reserves in dollars; thus, the dollar represents one-third of the world's foreign currency reserves.