The International Clearing Union (ICU) was one of the institutions proposed to be set up at the 1944 United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, in the United States, by British economist John Maynard Keynes.
Its aim was to establish regulation of currency exchange, a role eventually taken by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
All international trade would be denominated in a special unit of account, the proposed bancor.
Each nation would be incentivized to keep their bancor balance close to zero by one of two methods: in the case of an excessively positive bancor balance, part of their surplus would be taken and applied to the Clearing Union's Reserve Fund.
In the case of an excessively negative bancor balance, their currency’s exchange rate would be lowered, making imports more expensive and exports cheaper.