Three-Tiered Monetary Systems

Any POD at any time is fine; we just don’t have a subforum for that.

What sort of change would we have to have to get a nation (say, the US) to use a three-tiered monetary system to the present day?

The US has dollars and cents but Japan only has the Yen, leading to huge numbers quickly.

I’m talking about cents, dollars, and then a name on top of that (not just the US; any country). What reason would a country have to do this and what would the effects be, domestically and internationally?

Part two!

A POD to change any country that currently has a two-tiered system to a single tier.
 
I'm not totally sure this counts for what you're looking for, but would you mean something like what the UK used to have? I mean, that system was almost totally non-standardized for many periods in history, but you had things like how a pound was made up of shillings which themselves were made up of pence.
 
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta has its official currency as the scudo (which is pegged to the Euro.) Each scudo is composed of 12 tari. Each taro is composed of 20 grani. Each grano is composed of 6 piccoli.

In case that wasn't clear:

1 Scudo = 12 tari (singular taro) = 240 grani (singular grano) = 1440 piccoli (singular piccolo.)

The reason for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to do this, as far as I can gather, is essentially tradition. They're completely insignificant, and since the currency is Euro-pegged, it has essentially no economic consequence.
 
The Sovereign Military Order of Malta has its official currency as the scudo (which is pegged to the Euro.) Each scudo is composed of 12 tari. Each taro is composed of 20 grani. Each grano is composed of 6 piccoli.

In case that wasn't clear:

1 Scudo = 12 tari (singular taro) = 240 grani (singular grano) = 1440 piccoli (singular piccolo.)

The reason for the Sovereign Military Order of Malta to do this, as far as I can gather, is essentially tradition. They're completely insignificant, and since the currency is Euro-pegged, it has essentially no economic consequence.

How does one use a currency for a country that has no territory?
 
keep older denominations one way or the other ... as you explictly mentioned Yen, i'd point out that before 1870-1871, the Japanese Currency system was

1 Ryu = 4 Bu
1 Bu = 4 Shu
1 Shu = 250 Mon

so 1 Ryu = 4 Bu = 16 Shu = 4000 Mon

and in the early days of using Yen's Japan also had Sen with was the japanese pronounciation of Cent, and worked the same way with 1 Yen = 100 Sen, they even had Rin which were a tenth of a Sen (hence 1/1000 Yen), although both of them was taken out of circulation in 1953, after a few decades where their worth was more or less nil
 
Had the Brits just suck with the old system long enough, say into the 80s, exponentially increasing computing speeds would have eventually made the need for decimalization a moot point.

That being said, with a pound divided into 240 d. and assuming the Bank of England doesn't try to somehow maintain the pre-war exchange rate of $4 to the pound, inflation will eventually force some coins being retired. The farthing was retired sometime in the 50s. The hapenny was effectively retired with decimalization, since the New halfpenny was worth a bit more than the Old penny. The New halfpenny was retired in the late 80s (IIRC. The youngest one I have is from 1981). That would mean that the smallest coin in circulation today under the old system would be a tuppence, which then makes the whole point moot since, once the penny is retired, you've actually become a de jure decimalized currency anyway.

Worth also noting the US dollar is actually a three-tier system for tax purposes. Our various property tax rates across the country are quoted in mils (hence millage). That also explains the "9/10¢" we see in the price of gas
 
A POD to change any country that currently has a two-tiered system to a single tier.

Let some of the smaller currencies (with smaller in this case meaning that worth of 1 of the primary teir) work their way through a few decades of regular inflation, and the lower tier might well be removed. Its only fairly recently that Norway and Sweden took this step, removing their øringer/öringar only using Krones ('12 and '10 respectively). Denmark might well go this step sometime in the next two decades (having dropped 5 and 10 øres in 89 and 25 øre in 08), dropping the last small coin (50øre) ... allready now the general worth of that coin is basicly not existing (you can't even buy a pack of gum for that price)
 
I don't the see the benefits of a sane (ie, decimal) application of this. Either large denominations are common place due an inflationary past (say, you buy a chocolate with 500 of whatever the currency is called), so you don't use cents anymore, or only banks handle large denominations on a daily basis.
And, in that event, countries tend to avoid printing large denomination notes to complicate matters to the sectors of the economic which operate outside banks (which, in those amounts, are usually criminal activities).
So, you could have
Cents
Whatever the currency is called
Grands

But why? Banks can manage large figures without the need to convert to grands (or whatever). Average people aren't supposed to have 20 grand bill, not because they can't have that money but because the State would prefer to control such transactions.
Also cents, while they don't have be issued in coins, are issued in coins because lower denomination bills tend to be the bills passes along the most and coins are, obviously, far more resistant to the damage caused by passing hands over and over than paper. But there is no point in issuing "grands" in anything other than paper. So, why would a "20 grand" bill be printed instead of a 20,000 bill?
 
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