The Serbian dinar
Currency · RSD · 1 country
Serbia dates its dinar to 12 December 1873, when the Law on Minting the Serbian Silver Currency was adopted, and the National Bank of Serbia marked 150 years of it in December 2023. The name is older still: Serbian rulers struck silver dinars from the thirteenth century. The present dinar replaced the Yugoslav one in 2003.
No sign of its own
The dinar has no sign of its own. Amounts carry the abbreviation din. in Latin script or дин. in Cyrillic, as on the coins from din.1 to din.20. The para, a hundredth, takes its name from an Ottoman silver coin and the Persian pāra, coin; the dinar is no longer divided into it in practice.
- ISO code
- RSD
- ISO number
- 941
- Subunit
- para, 1/100
An amount, written out
RSD 1,234.50
- RSD 1,234.50English
- 1.234,50 RSDSerbianSerbia
In English the code comes before the amount. Where the Serbian dinar is used, it comes after the amount in Serbia.
Where the Serbian dinar is the official currency
Serbia has the dinar to itself. The National Bank of Serbia issues it, and the Institute for Manufacturing Banknotes and Coins prints the notes and strikes the coins at home.
About the Serbian dinar
Who issues the dinar
The National Bank of Serbia issues it. Its line runs back to the Law on the National Bank of 18 January 1883, which founded the Privileged National Bank of the Kingdom of Serbia; that bank opened its tellers in a rented house on Knez Mihailova Street in Belgrade on 2 July 1884. It became the National Bank of the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes in 1920 and changed its name with each Yugoslav state that followed. Under a 2003 law the National Bank of Yugoslavia carried on as the National Bank of Serbia.
The notes and coins are made at home. The Institute for Manufacturing Banknotes and Coins, set up in 1930 on a French model, has printed notes since 1930 and struck coins since 1938. In December 2023 nine notes and five coins were in circulation.
Why Serbia wanted a currency of its own
The Principality of Serbia ran on other people's money. In 1819 Prince Miloš Obrenović published a table rating 43 foreign coins against the groš as money of account. After the last Ottoman garrisons left in 1867, Prince Mihailo Obrenović ordered a national coinage, and bronze coins of 1, 5 and 10 para appeared in 1868. The National Bank of Serbia describes the 1873 silver law as a step away from the Sublime Porte as much as a monetary reform, passed while Serbia was still formally a vassal of Constantinople.
The new dinar was tied to Europe. From 1873 to 1894 it stood at par with the French franc, and the Kingdom of Serbia joined the Latin Monetary Union and kept a bimetallic standard until 1914. Gold-backed notes never won the public over, while silver-backed notes were well received.
How the Serbian dinar disappeared and came back
The Yugoslav dinar replaced it at par in 1920. A second Serbian dinar returned in 1941 in German-occupied Serbia, pegged at 250 to the reichsmark, and the Partisans swept it away in 1944 with a Yugoslav dinar worth 20 of them. Hyperinflation followed the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and the 1994 Monetary Stabilisation Programme stopped it. In 2003, when the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia became the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro, the Serbian dinar replaced the Yugoslav one. It carried the code CSD until the union dissolved in 2006 and has been RSD since.
Where the dinar stopped being spent
Montenegro and Kosovo had already moved to the Deutsche Mark and then to the euro. Serbs in North Kosovo and in the enclaves kept using the dinar until 2024, when the Kosovo government made the euro the sole legal tender and banned the dinar for payments. Critics accused Kosovo of raising ethnic tensions with the ban. The Kosovo government said the dinar was not banned.
Why Dante put a Serbian king among forgers
The medieval Serbian dinar copied the Venetian grosso closely, down to Latin lettering with Rex where the Venetian coin had Dux. Silver from Serbian mines made it an export, and Venice was wary. In the Divine Comedy Dante Alighieri placed the Serbian king of the time, Stefan Uroš II Milutin, in Hell as a forger, alongside the kings of Portugal and Norway.
Common questions
Questions about the Serbian dinar
How old is the Serbian dinar?
The National Bank of Serbia counts from 12 December 1873, when the Law on Minting the Serbian Silver Currency was adopted, and it marked the 150th anniversary with an exhibition in Belgrade in December 2023. Copper coins had come first, in 1868. The name goes back much further: a Serbian dinar is first mentioned in 1214, and most Serbian rulers minted silver dinars until 1459.
Is the dinar used in Kosovo?
Kosovo uses the euro, and before that it used the Deutsche Mark. Serbs in North Kosovo and in the enclaves went on paying in dinars until 2024, when the Kosovo government made the euro the sole legal tender and banned the dinar for payments. That decision was attacked as raising ethnic tensions; the Kosovo government answered that the dinar was not banned. Montenegro, which shared a state with Serbia until 2006, likewise uses the euro.
What does din. mean on a Serbian price?
It abbreviates dinar in Latin script; the Cyrillic form is дин. The currency has no symbol of its own, so prices use the abbreviation or the ISO code RSD, which replaced CSD in 2006 when the State Union of Serbia and Montenegro ended.
Why did Dante call a Serbian king a forger?
Medieval Serbian dinars copied the Venetian grosso, including its Latin lettering, with Rex in place of Dux. Serbian mines supplied plenty of silver, the coins travelled as an export, and Venice resented them. In the Divine Comedy Dante put King Stefan Uroš II Milutin, the king of Rascia, in Hell among the forgers for having copied the Venetian coin.