Franc, Swiss

The Swiss franc or simply the franc, (currency code: CHF; symbols: Fr. and fr.) is the currency and legal tender of Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It is also legal tender in the Italian exclave of Campione d'Italia, which is surrounded by Swiss territory. The Swiss National Bank (SNB) issues the banknotes, and the federal mint Swissmint issues the coins. The ISO 4217 currency code, CHF, is derived from Confoederatio Helvetica, the official name of Switzerland in Latin; this is used due to the multilingual nature of Switzerland. "CHF" is sometimes also used internationally in place of a symbol. Each franc is divided into one hundred subunits, known as Rappen (Rp.) in German, centime (c.) in French, centesimo (ct.) in Italian, and rap (rp.) in Romansh. The official symbols Fr. (in German) and fr. (in the Romance languages) are widely used by businesses and advertisers, including in English. However, according to Art. 1 SR/RS 941.101 of the federal law collection, the internationally official abbreviation – regardless of national languages – is CHF; respective guides also request that the ISO 4217 code be used. The use of the abbreviations SFr. and fr.sv. are obsolete.