The St Helena pound

Why St Helena issues its own pound

Until 1976 the island used sterling. The Currency Fund Ordinance of 1975 and the Currency Regulations of 1976 set up a currency board, and in February 1976 the government began issuing decimal notes at par with sterling. The economists Steve Hanke and Matt Sekerke say the aim was seigniorage: the fund earns interest on the reserves held against the money it issues. On 31 March 2001 it had £3,480,256 in notes and coins in circulation.

Crown Agents Asset Management runs the fund for the island's Commissioners. It holds securities, bank deposits and the bullion value of its coin against every pound it has issued, with cover between 117 and 138% of its monetary liabilities in the years Hanke and Sekerke examined. The fund cannot sterilise money flows or run a monetary policy of its own. The government gives its own reasons for keeping a separate currency: control over note issue and the supply of local cash, and a symbol of the island's identity as a British Overseas Territory.

How St Helena paid before the currency board

Under the East India Company, which settled the island in 1659, sterling was the official unit of account, but Spanish dollars made up most of what circulated. An Order in Council of 1684 brought in copper bars stamped with their weight and valued at one penny an ounce. Visiting ships refused them, islanders shunned them, and by the early eighteenth century they had more or less vanished. When the council cut the Spanish piece of eight from 6 shillings to 5 in March 1708, traders bought dollars cheap on St Helena and sold them in Madras at the old rate, until the island was nearly out of coin. The Company issued a copper halfpenny for St Helena in 1821.

The Crown took over in 1834. On 15 July 1843 most foreign coins were exchanged and shipped away to be melted into bullion, and in 1879 the council demonetised the Spanish dollar after its value fell from 4s 2d to 3s 8d. A Coinage Order of 1925 made South African silver legal tender as well, in the hope of closer trade with South Africa; the South African pound stopped being accepted in February 1961, when the rand replaced it. An ordinance of 1948 made Bank of England notes and United Kingdom coins the island's currency.

What St Helena notes and coins show

The currency board's first notes, in 1976, were £1 and £5. The 50p and £10 followed in 1979 and the £20 in 1986. The notes name only the Government of St. Helena. Circulating coins came in 1984, struck in the names of St Helena and Ascension to designs by Michael Hibbit, each showing a plant or animal of the islands. Some designs have changed since. The current set puts Jonathan the tortoise on the 5p, the ebony on a seven-sided 20p added in 1998 and a sooty tern on the £1 coin that replaced the note in 2002.

A polymer series of £5, £10 and £20 notes was announced for January 2026, with the portrait of Charles III, Jonathan and the St Helena ebony. Raised dots in one corner let blind users tell the notes apart: a square for £5, a triangle for £10, a circle for £20.

Where the St Helena pound works

The Bank of St Helena, the only bank on St Helena and Ascension, keeps its accounts in pounds and pays out St Helena notes on withdrawal. Transfers off the island go in sterling, euros, South African rand or US dollars, and visitors' card payments are charged in sterling, so the St Helena pound does not travel as a transfer currency. Tristan da Cunha, the third part of the territory, runs on sterling, with St Helena coins and notes in use there alongside British ones.