New Saudi Riyal Symbol: How to Type, Code and Print It in 10 Places

The new Saudi riyal symbol is the official sign of the national currency, approved by the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques on 20 February 2025 (21/08/1446H) and designed by the Saudi Central Bank (SAMA). It spells the word «ريال» in a form inspired by Arabic calligraphy, and SAMA presents it as suitable for all financial and commercial transactions.

SAMA's Saudi riyal symbol guidelines page offers five downloads: the usage guidelines (PDF), separate guidelines for font designers (PDF), and the symbol itself as SVG, PNG and EPS files. It does not offer a font file. The usage guidelines set 10 rules:

• Position (rule 1): the symbol goes to the left of the number, in every language.
• Spacing (rule 2): leave a space between the symbol and the number.
• Written value (rule 3): when part of the amount is in words, such as 5 million, the symbol still goes on the left.
• Negative value (rule 4): the symbol goes to the left of both the minus sign and the number.
• Proportions and geometry (rules 5 and 6): never stretch, squash or redraw it.
• Alignment (rule 7): its height matches the height of the text around it.
• Direction (rule 8): it matches the text direction, and a mirrored sign is marked wrong.
• Clear space (rule 9): keep an empty margin around it equal to one third of its height.
• Contrast (rule 10): its colour must stand out clearly from the background.

The same document lists where the symbol is used: banking services, trading platforms, economic reports and contracts, invoices and receipts, apps and e-commerce stores, and price tags on products. SAMA's font designers' guide lets typefaces adjust the symbol's weight and width, but not its structure, and it must work with Arabic and Latin numerals.

SAMA said in 2025 that use in transactions would be phased in, and Saudi press reported in March 2025 that the Ministry of Commerce requires the private sector to use the symbol wherever prices of goods and services appear. We found no published deadline as of October 2026; SAR stays the ISO 4217 code that ZATCA requires in e-invoice XML. So roll the symbol out channel by channel, switching each one once it displays correctly.

The Saudi riyal symbol's Unicode code point is U+20C1, named SAUDI RIYAL SIGN, added in Unicode 17.0 on 9 September 2025. Any modern system can store and send it; whether you can type it depends on your keyboard, and whether it displays depends on your fonts.

Avoid U+FDFC (﷼), an older rial sign: Unicode's script encoding group noted in March 2025 that it was made for the Iranian rial and can reorder the numbers beside it in English text.

Where typing stands as of October 2026:

• Windows 11: Microsoft's update KB5070311 (December 2025, versions 24H2 and 25H2, rolled out gradually) maps the sign to AltGr+S (right Alt plus S) on the Arabic (101) keyboard, and updates Arabic (102) and (102) AZERTY the same way. It is also on the touch keyboard's symbols page and the emoji panel's currency tab.
• Word for Windows: type 20C1, then press Alt+X to turn the code into the sign.
• Mac: in our test on 26 October 2026, Apple's system font on macOS 26.5 displayed the sign, while Arial, Helvetica and Times New Roman did not contain it. Results vary by macOS version and font, so check yours. Paste the sign, or save it as a text replacement in your keyboard settings.
• iPhone: Apple's update notes for iOS 26 and iOS 27, checked in October 2026, do not mention the riyal sign. Check the symbols page of your Arabic keyboard on your iOS version; if the sign is missing, add a shortcut under Settings > General > Keyboard > Text Replacement.
• Android: keyboards differ by phone maker and app version, so check your device, or paste the sign.

One surprise: software still defaults to the old labels. In the same test, Chrome and macOS 26.5 formatted a riyal amount with «ر.س.» in Arabic and SAR in English, and Unicode said in March 2025 that its locale data would add the new sign only as an alternative until fonts catch up. The sign appears only where you put it, so teach staff one method per device and keep the sign in a shared note.

On a website or online store, use the real character with a font that contains it, not an image in every price: text stays searchable, copyable and readable by screen readers.

• The sign itself: ⃁ (if you see a box, your font lacks it; copying still copies the right character)
• HTML entity: ⃁ or the decimal form ⃁
• Price on an English page: ⃁ 1,250.00 (the no-break space keeps the sign from wrapping away from the number)
• Price on an Arabic, right-to-left page: 1,250.00 ⃁ (type the number first and the sign lands on its left)
• CSS font used only for the sign: @font-face { font-family: "SaudiRiyal"; src: url("/fonts/saudi-riyal.woff2") format("woff2"); unicode-range: U+20C1; }
• CSS fallback order: body { font-family: "SaudiRiyal", "Your Brand Font", system-ui, sans-serif; }
• Excel or Google Sheets formula: =UNICHAR(8385)&" "&TEXT(A2,"#,##0.00")
• Excel custom number format: "⃁" #,##0.00;"⃁" -#,##0.00
• Word for Windows: type 20C1, then press Alt+X

With unicode-range, the browser downloads the SaudiRiyal font only when a page contains U+20C1 and uses it only for that character; every other letter still comes from your brand font. Build the small WOFF2 file from SAMA's official SVG with an icon-font tool, or choose a web font whose character list includes U+20C1. If you use a community-made riyal font, check that it maps the sign to U+20C1, not to U+FDFC or a private code.

In Excel, paste the number format under Home > Number Format > More Number Formats > Custom. Its second section handles negative amounts and keeps the sign left of the minus, as SAMA's rule 4 asks. In Google Sheets the path is Format > Number > Custom number format. A right-to-left sheet can move the sign, so test one cell before you format a whole price list, and switch the cell font if a box appears.

Odoo 20 does not ship the new sign: in the 20.0 source we checked on 26 October 2026, the Saudi riyal (SAR) carries the symbol SR, and the Saudi accounting localization (l10n_sa) does not change it. You can change it yourself in one place:

• Open Accounting > Configuration > Currencies (Invoicing in Odoo Community; see Odoo 20's multi-currency documentation) and open SAR.
• In the Symbol field, replace SR by pasting ⃁.
• Set Symbol Position. Before Amount puts the sign to the left of the number in English, and Odoo adds the space for you.
• Print one invoice in English and one in Arabic before you roll the change out.

That test matters because Odoo keeps one position per currency for every language. Arabic runs right to left, so Before Amount usually puts the sign on the right of the number in Arabic screens and PDFs, and After Amount puts it on the left; choose the setting that suits the language most of your invoices print in. If a PDF shows an empty box, the report font lacks the sign: keep SR until a font that has it is in place.

POS receipts: Odoo 20 builds each receipt as a small web page on the till, turns it into an image and sends that image to the printer. So the sign prints if the till's browser can display it, whatever fonts the printer holds; test every tablet and PC. Printers run by other POS software may use built-in characters that lack the sign, so ask that vendor. More in our Odoo 20 POS guide for retail and restaurants.

ZATCA: the e-invoice XML identifies currencies by code, not by the new sign. ZATCA's XML implementation standard (version 1.2, 19 May 2023) requires every currency to be the alphabetic ISO 4217 code, and the tax currency code must be SAR. We found no ZATCA rule requiring the new sign on the printed invoice as of October 2026 (check ZATCA's e-invoicing pages for updates), and adding it to your PDF changes nothing in your FATOORA integration. If your Wave 25 integration is still open, start with our ZATCA Wave 25 guide.

Roll the sign out in an order that protects sales: digital channels first, where a fix costs little, then print, where a mistake means a reprint. Work through these 10 places:

• Website product and price pages: the character or entity, a font that has it, and the unicode-range fallback.
• Online store cart, checkout and order emails, which often use different templates from product pages.
• The SAR symbol and its position in Odoo, tested in English and Arabic.
• PDF layouts for invoices, quotations and credit notes.
• POS screens and receipts on every till.
• Excel and Google Sheets price lists, with the custom number format above.
• Word and PowerPoint templates for quotations, proposals and contracts.
• Shelf price tags, menus and printed price lists: use SAMA's EPS or SVG file and keep its clear space.
• Social posts, flyers, banners and signs: the same files, the same proportions, enough contrast.
• Staff devices: one typing method per keyboard, such as AltGr+S on Windows or a text replacement on phones, plus a shared note holding the sign.

Keep SAR wherever systems need the currency code, such as payment files, e-invoice XML and system integrations, and use the sign wherever people read prices.

Your next step is a quick test. Paste ⃁ into one product price on your site, then open that page on a Windows PC, an iPhone and an Android phone, and note which ones show a box. That single test tells you whether you need a font fallback before anything else.

METCH builds and updates websites and online stores; to have your prices switched with the right font and fallback, see METCH's website and online store services. If your prices live in Odoo, read how Odoo runs e-commerce in Saudi Arabia, or tell us about your Odoo setup to plan the currency, invoice and POS changes.