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The ruble sign (₽, ) is the currency sign used for the Russian ruble, the official currency of Russia. It features the Cyrillic letter Р (R) with a horizontal stroke. The design was approved on 11 December 2013 after a public poll that took place a month earlier. The international three-letter code (according to ISO standard ISO 4217) for the ruble is RUB. In Unicode it is encoded at U+20BD ₽ ruble sign (HTML ₽). In Russian, the sign usually follows the value, in English and other languages it precedes the value.
History
The debates about adopting the national currency symbol for Russian ruble began from nearly the start of Russia's economy integration into the global market in 1990s. The idea was to rival well-known signs such as $, ¥ and £. There were several contests, hosted by different organizations, to choose the sign. The Central Bank of Russia did not yet adopt the symbol.
In 2007, the initiative group of Russian design bureaus and studios proposed to use the stroked Cyrillic Р (R) letter (₽) to represent the ruble. Since then, many electronic retailers, restaurants and cafés started to use the sign unofficially. It became very popular and was widely used as a de facto standard.
In November 2013, the Central Bank of Russia finally decided to adopt the national currency sign and placed a public poll on its website with five prechosen options. One, earlier provided by the design community, was on the list and got the most votes. On 11 December 2013, it was approved as official sign for the ruble.