A currency sign is a graphic symbol used as a shorthand for a currency's name, especially in reference to amounts of money. They typically employ the first letter or character of the currency, sometimes with minor changes such as ligatures or overlaid vertical or horizontal bars. Today, ISO 4217 codes are used instead of currency signs for most official purposes,^{[citation needed]} though currency signs may be in common use in many other contexts. Few currencies in the world have no short-hand symbol at all.

Although many former currency signs were rendered obsolete by the adoption of the euro, having a new and unique currency sign — implementation of which requires the adoption of new unicode and type formats — has now become a status symbol for international currencies. The European Commission considers part of the success of the euro was the global recognition of the euro sign €. In 2009, India launched a public competition to replace the ₨ ligature it shared with neighboring countries. It finalized its new currency symbol, ₹ () on 15 July 2010. It is a blend of the Latin letter 'R' with the Devanagari letter "र".