Below is a sample mailout from the XE Currency Update Service. When you subscribe to the service, you will receive a daily e-mail like this example. Your Currency Update e-mail has three main sections:

You will find currency news headlines, including the source and timestamp.

This area contains the central bank interest rates for the 6 most influential central banks.

Currencies are always quoted in pairs. The first currency is called the base currency, and the second currency is called the counter currency. In general terms, the base currency you choose should be the currency you have.

Listed under the Currency Rates section, you will see your chosen base currency and the timestamp for the currency rate data; in this example, the mailout uses rates from 23:52 UTC on Jan 9, 2005. Next, you will see the rate table, containing three columns:

1. The Currency Unit (the counter currency being compared to your base currency).
2. The amount of base currency needed to buy 1 unit of counter currency.
3. The amount of the counter currency needed to buy 1 unit of your base currency.

In the example below, the selected base currency is USD United States Dollars. If you wanted to know the Euro rate, you would search for "EUR Euro" under the "Currency Unit" heading.

Base currency is USD.
Rates as of 2008-02-05 20:09:30 UTC (GMT).

The first column shows the counter currency – in this case, the Euro. The second column lists the number of US Dollars that you could buy* with one Euro. The third column lists the number of Euro that you could buy* with one US Dollar. Of course, these values only apply to the timestamp date.

If you have questions, you can read our FAQ