The soms is an official currency of Kyrgyzstan Republic with code KGS and symbol C. The word soms means pure in many languages such as Uzbek, Kyrgyz, Uyghur, Kazakh and many Turkish languages. In February 2017, the National Bank of Kyrgyzstan Republic approved an underlined C as symbol for official currency.
The Kyrgyzstan Soms was introduced on 10th May 1993 by replacing the previous currency Soviet ruble at the rate of 1 soms = 200 rubles. Initially only banknotes were issued, coins were introduced in 2008. Coins were issued in denomination of 1, 3, 5 soms and 10, 50 tiyin. Coin of 10 soms was introduced in 2009. In 1994, the second series of banknotes were issued by the Kyrgyz Bank in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50, and 100 soms. The 3rd series of banknotes were issued in 1997 and 4th in 2009. Recently the frequently used banknotes of 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000, 5000 soms and rarely used 1, 10, 50 tyiyn, 1, 5, 10, 2000 soms while frequently used coins of 1, 3, 5, 10 soms and rarely used 1, 10, 50 tyiyn generally circulate in Kyrgyzstan economy.