Denomination (currency)

Today, only a few places have more than one subunit, notably the Jordanian dinar is divided into 10 dirham, 100 qirsh/piastres, or 1000 fils.

Many countries where Western European languages are spoken currently have their main units divided into 100 subunits.

Examples include Korean won = 5 yang in 1893, Iranian toman = 10 rials (used informally today).

This advantage (in an age without mechanical or electronic calculators) and the lack of widespread accurate weighing apparatus (meaning an item might sometimes simply be divided in 2, 4, 5 etc.)

In theory, two countries currently use non-decimal currency: Mauritania (1 ouguiya = 5 khoums) and Madagascar (1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja).

The last major countries to use non-decimal currencies in practice were the United Kingdom (until 1971), Ireland (1971), Malta (1972) and Nigeria (1973).

The monetary reform of Peter the Great in the Russian Empire not only established a strictly decimal monetary system (which was rather uncommon in other states back in those times) but made the display of denomination (the "face value") mandatory on all coins.

Exceptions are quite rare: for example, British commemorative crowns (or 25 pence coins after the decimal reform) traditionally do not display any face value, and are only recognized as such due to their typical size.