Even though each country has their own currency, people have the international currency called dollar. Dollar is the most well-known currency in all over the world including in Indonesia. Although businesses which operate in Indonesia use dollar as the currency but they still use Indonesian Rupiah daily.

Controlled by the Bank of Indonesia, Rupiah has been released. Rupiah is the Indonesian official currency and the code is IDR. It is the acronym of Indonesian Rupiah. The code obtained from the ISO 4217 long time ago. In addition, Indonesia has another name for the currency, it is ‘perak’ that refers to 100 sen.

Years ago the Republic of Indonesia itself had some variants of the rupiah. The variants had been found in Riau and Irian Barat. But, they didn’t last long and at the 1964 and 1971 they were all included into rupiah. From the early usage of Rupiah, it had been first used in October 1946 and Indonesian Rupiah had many kinds of different revising. In 1950, the recognition of so many countries in the world gives a command to replace all kinds of currency in Indonesia into a single currency item. Rupiah is getting stabilized slowly after reformation had happened.

 Banknotes

There are many banknotes of the currency of Indonesian Rupiah. Nowadays, only a few of the banknotes are used by Indonesians since the releasing at 2000. 1,000 rupiah was the first released at 2000, it contains picture of captain Pattimura and on the other side are Tidore and Maitara islands with fisherman on the boat, the background are blue and green.

At November 6, 2001, 5,000 rupiah denomination was released. Tuanku Imam Bonjol and Songket weaver became the characteristics that are placed side by side with brown and green as the background.

There were two banknotes that were released in 2004, green color as the background of 20,000 with Otto Iskandar di Nata and Tea Plantation pictures on it. For 50,000, blue color is the theme.

I Gusti Ngurah Rai and Pura Ulun Danau Bratan, Bali placed side by side. In 2005, 10,000 rupiah were released.

Red-purple with sultan Mahmud Badaruddin II and the traditional Limas House of Palembang filled the banknotes.

The other released, Sukarno Hatta and DPR/MPR building fill the banknotes.

The newest one is 2,000 rupiah released in 2009, grey background with Antasari Prince and Dayak Dancers are the characteristics. The revision happened in 2010 for 10,000 rupiah.

 Exchanging Foreign Currency

The exchange of foreign currencies can be found in major cities in Indonesia. They serve only for 7-8 foreign currencies. Then, it is getting harder if you want to change small amount of the currencies because usually banks provide limited amounts of exchanging. You can exchange your Indonesian Rupiah with other currencies started at 10:30 AM, and will ended at 2:30 PM.

The rates of the amount of currency are usually taken from Jakarta Post and another major newspaper and mobile a website named Kurs Dollar. Thus, if you are an international business man that always needs an exchanging foreign currency, you must be careful to choose the banks. If you find one, then use it each time you will exchange, because the amount of the exchanging will be different in other currencies.