GLOSSARY
Quote currency
The second currency in a pair — the money the price is quoted and settled in.
Updated 2026-09-04 · Educational content · No broker owns this site
Quick answer. The quote currency is the second currency listed in a currency pair. The exchange rate states how many units of the quote currency are required to buy one unit of the base currency.
In EUR/USD, the US dollar is the quote currency. It is sometimes called the counter currency or the terms currency — same thing. If the base currency is the item on the shelf, the quote currency is the money in your hand.
Why does the quote currency matter more than beginners expect?
Because your profit and loss is denominated in it. A EUR/USD trade pays out in dollars. A EUR/GBP trade pays out in pounds. If your account is in dollars and you trade EUR/GBP, your gain arrives in pounds and has to be converted before it lands in your balance — so the EUR/GBP result you calculated is not quite the number that hits your account.
It also sets the value of a pip, because a pip is a movement in the quote currency. Take one mini lot, 10,000 units:
- EUR/USD — quote is USD, pip is 0.0001. One pip = 10,000 × 0.0001 = $1.00. A clean, fixed number, because the quote currency is already dollars.
- USD/JPY — quote is JPY, pip is 0.01. One pip = 10,000 × 0.01 = 100 JPY. To express that in dollars you divide by the rate: at USD/JPY 150.00, 100 ÷ 150.00 = $0.67. It drifts as the rate moves.
That is the whole reason pip values are constant on some pairs and not on others. It is not a quirk of the platform — it follows from which currency is doing the quoting.
Which quote currencies will you actually meet?
Mostly the US dollar. The BIS Triennial Central Bank Survey for April 2025 found the dollar on one side of 89.2% of all trades, with the euro at 28.9%, the yen at 16.8% and sterling at 10.2%. Those shares total 200% rather than 100% because each trade is counted for both of its currencies.
The mistake beginners make
Calculating a trade in the quote currency and forgetting the account is held in something else. A trader with a US dollar account who makes 40 pips on EUR/GBP has made pounds, not dollars — and the conversion happens at whatever GBP/USD is doing at the time, which is a second exchange-rate exposure nobody deliberately took on. Trading pairs whose quote currency matches your account currency removes that layer entirely.
Related terms
- Base Currency — the other half of the pair
- Currency Pair — how the two sides fit together
- Pip — the unit the quote currency moves in
- Exchange Rate — the number that connects the two
Every term above is part of the same idea: how a forex price is written down and what it costs you to trade on it. Start at currency pair if you are reading these for the first time, or browse the full glossary.