For a common man currency seems to be fairly simple concept, something  which helps buy or sell things or get paid or pay our bills etc. etc. But if you look inside it is more than simple transactions. In a way currency system is an agreement among the countries/communities/businesses to store the value or help transactions during trade or sale of items/goods.  Currency is a unit of purchasing power and a substitute of goods or services. Since it is a substitute of goods and services it is also a sign of human intelligence to use his intellect to help make everyone’s life convenient and more efficient.

    In a way advent of currency system has helped shape our civilization. This helps produce fair competition among the individual, business, nations and in fact it is an identity of nations. It is a sign of prosperity and indicates how their economy is doing at that particular point of time.

    It also helps store the commodity value in a way without which there would have been a lot of waste and no trade possible. For example in barter system it allows us to store the perishable items value through currency. All the perishable items produced by farmers can not be consumed by him completely so he must sell it and that requires currency. With the help of wire transfer we can transfer currency quickly to any part of the globe making the trade and life faster and convenient. With the help of currency one nation can transfer unused goods to another nation in need of that and vice versa. In turn it helps in global unity and adds to the idea of global village.

     There are a number of currency and payment systems available today. The most appropriate for a particular transaction will depend upon our objectives and to availability to some extent. Now days the currency exchange is possible through coins, drafts, bills, cards and even through internet. And as this system has traveled the journey and progressed from coins to internet if you look back ; the civilization has also took a new turn along with the change in currency so it is fair to say it is a mark of civilization. We all know about the national currency like Dollars, Euros, Rupee, and Yen etc. These are meant to be part of country business transactions; of course these can be exchanged between two countries. You might have heard about community currency, these are form of paper script issued at county, town or community level for use at local participating businesses. These are meant to encourage the local business as against big chain stores. Community currencies can be exchanged at the local banks at a particular value. If a particular town with a community currency has a lot of businesses then the community currency might be successful otherwise it might fail. The success of community currency will also depend upon the acceptance of this currency for doing businesses. How about coupons? It is also a part of currency system in an effort to bring customers to the businesses.

Have you heard of day trading or Forex trading etc., these are all part of or extension to currency systems. Whether manual or automatic, part of this trading system you try to follow the signals of whether to buy or sell a particular currency or particular time. Manual systems involve expert traders who look for signals himself or he might use software to automate the process of looking those signals, also called automated trade. One currency can be exchanged into another based upon exchange rate, usually there will be two different buy and sell exchange rates for buying and selling because these financial institutions make money during the process. These exchange rates could also vary from day to day. All these Forex traders use a “base” currency to have their transactions. This is the currency upon which all the profits and losses are recorded. If a currency exchange does not include dollars then it some times called cross currency. Under triangular arbitrage one currency converts to second and then third and then back to the original in very short span of time.
Lastly not to mention Stock exchange helps in transacting the stocks, bonds, ETFs etc. helping big companies businesses.