Currency, Rials or Tomans?
Iranian money, Rials or Tomans? Usually, this is what confuses almost every traveller in Iran. Yes, we have two common currencies in Iran. The first and the official currency is Iranian Rial (Rls or ریال) and the currency people use informally, is Tomans. Basically, each Toman is equal to 10 Rials. So, 1000 Tomans equals to 10,000 Rials.

Iranians use Rials in banknotes, coins, official deals and use Tomans informally. Rials are the printed and Tomans are the discussed currencies. So, when you want to buy something at a store, pay for taxi and shopping, you are facing Tomans, not Rials.
When a taxi driver says the price from getting here to there is 500, he means Tomans, which means that you’ll be paying using a 5,000 Rial note. Since we have too many zeros in our bank notes (Check out Iran banknotes below), sometimes people even don’t bother to say 3000 or 5000 tomans and prefer saying 3 or 5 Tomans! You can see why the government is thinking about changing the currency to make purchases more practical. You’ll also quickly get a feel for the prices of items and which currency value you are being quoted. Thus, whenever you are paying something you can ask them and check it again to see if it’s the right price.
Currency Information
Iranian Rial (IRR, symbol Rls).
Currently, we use eight different banknotes (100,000, 50,000, 20,000, 10,000, 5,000, 2,000, 1,000 and 500 Rials) and five different coins (5000, 2000, 1000, 500 and 250 Rials).
If they’re not falling apart, Iranian banknotes are easy to read as the numbers and names are printed in Farsi and English. However, coins are only marked in Persian (Farsi).

Banknotes: