An exchange rate table looks like a price list and is read like one, which is where the trouble starts. It is closer to a measurement with metadata attached: the number means nothing without the unit, the direction, the moment it was taken and who took it. Miss any one and the figure is wrong by a factor you will not notice.
The currency code
Three letters, and they are not decorative. The ISO 4217 standard gives every currency a code whose first two letters are the country and whose third is usually the currency's initial: CHF for the Swiss franc, JPY for the Japanese yen, GBP for the pound sterling.
Codes matter because names collide. There are dozens of currencies called some variety of dollar, franc, peso or krona, and a table listing "krone" without a code is ambiguous between at least two Nordic countries. When you copy a rate from anywhere, copy the code with it.
The quotation unit
The column that is skipped most often and causes the largest errors. Next to most currencies you will find a 1; next to the yen and the forint you will find 100.
That number tells you how many units the price refers to. A figure of 0.58 beside the yen with a unit of 100 is the price of a hundred yen, not one. Read it as the price of one and every conversion you do is off by two orders of magnitude — plausibly, silently, and in the direction that makes the yen look far more valuable than it is. The convention and where it comes from are covered in why the yen is quoted per 100.
The direction of the quote
A rate is a ratio, and a ratio can be printed either way up.
Some tables publish how much of the listed currency you get for one unit of the base. Others publish how much of the base you pay for one unit of the listed currency. The two numbers are reciprocals of each other, so confusing them does not produce a small error — it inverts the result.
The check takes a second: pick a currency you know is worth more than the base and see whether its number is above or below one. If sterling appears as 0.85 against the euro, the table is quoting pounds per euro. If it appears as 1.17, it is quoting euros per pound.
The columns
Depending on the source you will see one, two or three numbers per currency.
| Column | Whose price it is | When it applies to you |
|---|---|---|
| Buy | The institution buys from you | You are handing over foreign currency |
| Mid / reference | Nobody's | Contracts, customs, accounting, comparison |
| Sell | The institution sells to you | You are acquiring foreign currency |
Every retail column is written from the institution's point of view, not yours, which is why the labels feel backwards at the counter. The gap between buy and sell is the actual price of the transaction, and it is discussed in buy rate, sell rate and the spread.
A table with only one number per currency is a reference table. Nobody will trade with you at those figures — see what the mid-market rate is.
The date and the moment
A rate table is valid for an instant, not a day. The European Central Bank strikes its euro reference rates once each working day and publishes them at 16:00 CET; between one publication and the next, the market has moved and the published figure has not.
Two consequences follow. First, a rate quoted without a date is unusable for anything official — a customs declaration or a contract needs the rate in force on a specific date, and that is a different number from today's. Second, comparing two tables is only meaningful if they were struck at the same moment. A morning figure and an afternoon figure for the same pair will differ, and neither is a mistake.
Weekends and holidays are a special case: no new rate is struck, so the last working day's figure stands. That is why a payment dated Sunday is converted at Friday's rate.
The source
Finally, whose table it is. A central bank publishes reference rates; a commercial bank publishes its own offers; an aggregator republishes someone else's with its own timestamp.
Different sources will disagree in the third or fourth decimal even when all of them are honest, because they were struck at different moments from different sets of quotes. That is normal and is worth knowing before you conclude that one of them is wrong. On this site each figure on the currency pages carries its unit, its source and the moment it was taken, so all five pieces of information travel with the number.
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Related articles
What the mid-market rate is, and why nobody will exchange money at it
The mid-market rate is the number you see everywhere and can trade at nowhere. Here is what it is actually for, and where it genuinely applies.
Why the rate at the counter is never the rate you looked up
The published reference rate is not a price you can trade at. What the buy and sell rates are, which one applies to you, and what the gap between them costs.
Why the yen looks cheap — quotation units explained
Some currencies are quoted per 100 or per 1,000 units, not per one. Miss that and every conversion you make is off by two orders of magnitude.
Frequently asked questions
How an exchange rate is actually set, what a spread costs on a real transaction, what happens when your income and your debt are in different currencies, and what to check before paying or being paid abroad. They explain mechanisms rather than forecast rates, and each one carries the date it was last revised at the top.
No. We publish no forecasts, price targets or trading calls, and no article recommends buying or selling a currency. Exchange rates over short horizons are close to unpredictable, and a site that pretends otherwise is selling something. What the articles do instead is explain the mechanism, so that you can read the news for yourself.
They are written by the kursdanas.rs editorial team. We accept no commissioned or sponsored articles, and advertising has no influence on what is published or on the order of anything in our tables. Where an article states a figure it names the source, and where we get something wrong we correct it and change the revision date shown on the page.