World currency

In the foreign exchange market and international finance, a world currency or global currency refers to a currency in which the vast majority of international transactions take place and which serves as the world's primary reserve currency.

A world currency is at one extreme of a conceptual spectrum that has local currency at the other extreme.

Currencies have many forms depending on several properties: type of issuance, type of issuer and type of backing. The particular configuration of those properties leads to different types of money. The pros and cons of a currency are strongly influenced by the type proposed. Consider, for example, the properties of a complementary currency.

The euro and the United States dollar

Since the mid-20th century, the de facto world currency has been the United States dollar. According to Robert Gilpin in Global Political Economy: Understanding the International Economic Order (2001): "Somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of international financial transactions are denominated in dollars. For decades the dollar has also been the world's principal reserve currency; in 1996, the dollar accounted for approximately two-thirds of the world's foreign exchange reserves" (255).