Today's Edition
ALLAN JACOB (ABU DHABI)
Users may soon be able to find the UAE Dirham symbol on their smartphone and laptop keyboards, apps, and operating systems with the Unicode Consortium adding it to its list of codes that can be used by technology companies.
The UAE Dirham symbol has been added to the updated Unicode 18.0, with the Omani Riyal and the Rufiyya of the Maldives being the other currency symbols. The UAE has been assigned the code U+20C3, a year after the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) had authorised its public use.
Unicode (Universal Character Encoding) is a global standard that shows text characters in binary form, which helps with consistent storage, exchange, and processing of text across different digital systems and platforms.
The latest Unicode 18.0 has 13,007 new characters, including nine new emoji characters, which brings the total number of encoded characters to 172,808, the consortium said.
So, what is the Unicode Standard? It is the representation of text in all modern software products and standards, and is the basis of all digital communications.
Technology companies, data vendors, governments, international agencies and user groups are members of the Unicode Consortium.
The UAE Central Bank has set conditions for use of the Dirham symbol. It may be used in financial and transactional contexts where values are expressed in numerals.
It appears on physical currency notes and coins and is used in systems such as point-of-sale terminals, ATMs, accounting software, financial reports, cheques, and invoices.
“In digital interfaces, it should be shown next to numeric values in apps, calculators, pricing displays, and forms,” says the CBUAE. The symbol should not be used in logos and branding element and should never replace the full written form “Dirhams” when amounts are spelled out.
