X-ISO4217-A3 defines a new IANA registry to keep track of identifiers for currencies or currency-like commodities lying outside the traditional scope of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) 4217 alpha-3 standard, such as digital currencies and commodities, currencies issued by countries (nation-states) with limited international recognition, private or commercial currencies, and accounting units for local exchange and trading systems (LETS). Such codes are already in use; the registry simply codifies their existence.

• Publication status: Published

• Ensure that your systems remain forward-compatible by supporting both conventional currencies via the ISO4217-A3 standard, and emerging currencies and currency-like commodities, for example:
  • Digital cryptographic currencies such as Bitcoin, Ripple and Tonal Bitcoin
  • Various carbon trading commodities, suitable for environmentally responsible / green businesses
  • Commercial currencies such as widespread in-game currencies used by various virtual environments
  • Future currencies and commodities
• Enable greater global financial connectivity
  • Digital currencies promise a greater market for goods and services that exceeds the traditional credit card or payment processor account-based online payments marketplace. Broaden your market by allowing developing world consumers to pay you directly, cutting out friction and overheads at your online point of sale.
  • Lower overheads
  • Faster settlements
  • Greater liquidity and lower capital tie-up
  • Irreversible customer transactions (forget dealing with credit card chargebacks, high merchant account fees, and other current-era financial infrastructure issues) .. very suitable for the global provision of digital goods and services.

• 2013-05-25: draft-stanish-x-iso4217-a3-01: Complete section on input treatment. Expand treatment of formatting and add section on prefix selection in response to feedback from Bill McQuillan. Change ISO identifier to 'Z' in response to feedback from Bill McQuillan. Add IANA notes on handling ISO duplicate assignments. Modify IANA considerations regarding code maintenance. Correct formatting and typographic errors.
• 2012-11-13: draft-stanish-x-iso4217-a3-00: Initial release.