The first edition of ISO 4217 was published in 1978. The tables, history and ongoing discussion are maintained by SIX Group on behalf of ISO and the Swiss Association for Standardization (SNV).

The ISO 4217 code list is used in banking and business globally. In many countries, the ISO 4217 alpha codes for the more common currencies are so well known publicly that exchange rates published in newspapers or posted in banks use only these to delineate the currencies, instead of translated currency names or ambiguous currency symbols. ISO 4217 alpha codes are used on airline tickets and international train tickets to remove any ambiguity about the price.

In 1973, ISO/TC 68 commenced development of a code for representing currencies, with this resulting standard being encouraged for use in international trade per UNECE Recommendation 9. The Recommendation uses ISO 3166 country codes in its currency table, and notes that these codes correspond to the three-letter ISO 4217 codes where possible.

Due to the volatility of global currencies - such as in the event of redenomination or country formation - the standard is actively maintained and amended by a delegated authority of the SNV, with the most recent edition being ISO 4217:2015.

In the case of national currencies, the first two letters of the alpha code are the two letters of the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code and the third is usually the initial of the currency's main unit. So Japan's currency code is JPY: "JP" for Japan and "Y" for yen. This eliminates the problem caused by the names dollar, franc, peso, and pound being used in many countries, each having significantly differing values.

The use of the initial letter "X" for these purposes is facilitated by the ISO 3166 rule that no official country code beginning with X will ever be assigned.

The inclusion of the EU (denoting the European Union) in the ISO 3166-1 reserved codes list allows the euro to be coded as EUR rather than assigned a code beginning with X, even though it is a supranational currency.

ISO 4217 also assigns a three-digit numeric code to each currency. This numeric code is usually the same as the numeric code assigned to the corresponding country by ISO 3166-1. For example, USD (United States dollar) has numeric code 840 which is also the ISO 3166-1 code for the United States.