Australian Dollars

The Australian dollar is the official currency of the Commonwealth of Australia. It also serves as currency on Christmas Island, on the Cocos Islands, and on the Norfolk Island. The Pacific Island states of Tuvalu, Nauru, and Kiribati, which are independent, also use the Australian Dollar.

This currency utilizes the dollar sign ($) when used in Australia itself, and usually makes use of an “A$” to designate Australia to avoid confusion with US dollars and other dollar currencies. The Australian dollar, like the United States and Canada dollars, is subdivided into 100 cents, and has a variety of different notes and coins in circulation. It is the fifth most commonly traded currency in the world, with only the Pound Sterling, the Yen, the Euro, and the U.S. Dollar in front of it.

The Australian dollar is used by 7 different Australian territories, and by 3 different countries. The official source for the currency is the Reserve Bank of Australia, and it is pegged by the Kiribati dollar and also by the Tuvaluan dollar at par. The coins in use by this system are in denominations of 5 cents, 10 cents, 20 cents, 50 cents, 1 dollar, and 2 dollars.

The banknotes in use by the system are in denominations of 5 dollars, 10 dollars, 20 dollars, 50 dollars, and 100 dollars. The central bank that regulates the Australian dollar is the Reserve bank of Australia, and the mint used for minting coinage is the Royal Australian Mint.

The Australian dollar is unique for several reasons. For one, it has a pretty high interest rate in Australia. Two, it enjoys pretty relative freedom in the foreign exchange market, with little government intervention. Three, both the Australian economy and the political system are considered very stable by world economic standards. All of these work together to make the Australian dollar a very popular dollar among currency traders.

Before the new currency was named the dollar in Australia, there were a lot of different and quite exotic suggestions for names. The Royal, the oz, the roo, the boomer, the emu, the kanga, the kwid, the austral, the dinkum, and the ming were all names that were considered. The official name actually became the royal, but it proved so unpopular that it was later changed to the Australian dollar, which is what it remains to this day.

The external sites discussed on the homepage can not only help convert pounds to US dollars, but also Australian dollars to New Zealand dollars or Singapore dollars, or any other currency.