Currency of UAE

The currency of the UAE is Dirham; the ISO code of the UAE Dirham is AED. The Dirham is further divided into 100 fils. It was introduced in 1973 to replace the Qatar and Dubai riyal, which had circulated in all of emirates except Abu Dhabi where the Bahraini dinar was circulating but was then replaced by the UAE dirham, subsequently. The name dirham comes from a Greek word Drachmae, which means “handful”.

The UAE first coins were introduced in 1973 in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25, 50 fils, and 1 dirham; with the 1, 5, and 10 fils made of bronze, and the higher ones in cupro-nickel. In 1995, the 50 fils and 1 dirham coins were reduced in size and shaped into a curve-equilateral-heptagon. Bank notes of the dirham were introduced in May 1973 in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 dirham; the 1000 dirham was released in 1976. A second series of notes weren’t issues until 1982. Soon after, 500, 200, and 2000 notes were introduced and the 1000 dirham note was reintroduced. A falcon watermark had to be used on all dirham notes to prevent such fraud, as the one dirham shared similarities in weight, shape, and size with a few other currencies.