ISO 4217 or banking. At the 17th session (February 1978), the related UN/ECE Group of Experts agreed that the three-letter alphabetic codes for International Standard ISO 4217, "Codes for the representation of currencies and funds", would be suitable for use in international trade. Over time, new currencies are created and old currencies are discontinued. Frequently, these changes are due to the formation of new governments, treaties between countries standardizing on a shared currency, or revaluation of an existing currency due to excessive inflation. As a result, the list of codes must be updated from time to time. The ISO 4217 maintenance agency
Standards organization such organizations are the International Organization for Standardization, the International Electrotechnical Commission, and the International Telecommunication Union, which have each existed for more than 50 years (founded in 1947, 1906, and 1865, respectively) and are all based in Geneva, Switzerland. They have established tens of thousands of standards covering almost every conceivable topic. Many of these are then adopted worldwide replacing various incompatible "homegrown" standards. Many of these standards are naturally evolved from those designed in-house within an industry, or by a particular country, while others have been built from scratch by groups of experts who sit on various technical