Cambodian riel
currency of Cambodia
The riel (; Khmer: រៀល, romanized: riĕl [riəl]; sign: ៛; ISO code: KHR) is the currency of Cambodia; its base unit is the eponymous riel. There have been two distinct riels, the first issued between 1953 and May 1975. Between 1975 and 1980, the country had no monetary system due to the Khmer Rouge regime's radical policies to abolish currency. A second currency, also named riel, has been issued since 20 March 1980. Since the late 1990s, the riel has had an unofficial fixed exchange rate of 4,100:1 with the United States dollar, which is also used as a de facto currency for commercial transactions. Its subunits, the kak (1⁄10 riel) and the sen (1⁄100), are no longer in common use due to inflation.
Popular belief suggests that the name of the currency comes from the Mekong river fish riĕl ("small fish" in Khmer). It is more likely that it derives from the high-silver content Spanish-American dollar, whose value is eight reales, a coin widely used for international trade in Asia and the Americas from the 16th to 19th centuries. Thus, the riel shares the same etymology as various Middle Eastern currencies called "rial", which are all derived from the Portuguese and Spanish word real.
Concurrent use with foreign currencies
In rural areas the riel is used for virtually all purchases, large and small.
“Cambodian riel” enters the record as currency of Cambodia. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cambodian, riel and currency can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q204737. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1975 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cambodian riel” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.