The Iraqi dinar

Who has issued the dinar since the Currency Board

An Iraq Currency Board, set up in London in 1931, issued the new dinar and held its reserves. Its first notes appeared on 16 March 1932, from a quarter dinar to 100 dinars, printed in Britain by Bradbury, Wilkinson and Co. and convertible into sterling. The dinar stayed at par with the pound until 1959, when the peg moved to the US dollar at US$2.80 without any change in value.

The National Bank of Iraq was founded in 1947 and took over the note issue from the board in 1949. That bank is today's Central Bank of Iraq. Article 34 of the Central Bank of Iraq Law No. 64 of 1976 made it the sole authority in the country with power to issue legal tender. A new Central Bank of Iraq Law in 2004 re-established it as an independent central bank, wholly owned by the state.

Why Iraq ran two dinars in the nineties

Sanctions after the Gulf War of 1990 cut Iraq off from De La Rue, the British firm that had printed its notes. New notes were printed inside Iraq and in China, on wood-pulp paper instead of cotton or linen, and some were badly cut or lacked serial numbers. Until 2002 the highest denomination printed was 250 dinars. A 10,000-dinar note issued that year for large and interbank payments was rarely accepted.

The older De La Rue notes became known as Swiss dinars. In the Kurdish-populated north, cut off politically from Baghdad, they kept circulating, and the regional government refused the new notes. Because no more Swiss dinars were being printed, they held their value there while the notes from Baghdad kept losing theirs.

How the occupation authority replaced both dinars

Order 43 of the Coalition Provisional Authority set the terms. The Central Bank of Iraq would issue a new series, exchange the old notes free of charge from 15 October 2003 to 15 January 2004, and destroy what it took in. The official rates were one new dinar for one 1990 dinar and 150 new dinars for one Swiss dinar. Swiss 25-dinar notes were kept out of the exchange period.

De La Rue printed the new notes again. The series had six values, from 50 to 25,000 dinars, and a 500-dinar note followed in October 2004. The 50 was withdrawn on 30 April 2015, with holders told to exchange it one for one at their banks. A 50,000-dinar note was announced in November 2015, carrying an outline of the Tigris and the Euphrates. When the bank redesigned several notes in 2018, it replaced a verse of the Quran on the 1,000-dinar note with the Assyrian flag, after users on social media drew attention to the verse.

Where the fils coins went

The first coins, struck in 1931 and 1932, ran from 1 to 200 fils, and the 20, 50 and 200 fils pieces were half silver. Coins of 250 fils arrived in 1970, and 500 fils and one-dinar coins in 1982. Production stopped after 1990. The coins issued in 2004 are denominated in dinars, 25, 50 and 100, in bronze, brass and nickel-plated steel, and show an abstract map of Iraq with its main rivers.

What the revaluation trade sells

After 2003 a business grew up selling dinars to buyers abroad at inflated prices, on the promise that the currency would one day be revalued close to the US dollar. At least one large seller was convicted of fraud. State agencies in Washington, Utah, Oklahoma and Alabama warned investors that no place outside Iraq exchanges the dinar and that claims of a revaluation had little evidence behind them. The Better Business Bureau listed foreign currency schemes of this kind among the ten notable scams of 2013.

The Central Bank of Iraq announced plans in 2025 and 2026 for a central bank digital currency, a digital dinar.