CUSIP is a 9-bit alphanumeric code that uniquely identifies North American financial instruments (mainly stocks) for clearing and closing transactions . Distributed in the USA and Canada . CUSIP codes are used by Standard & Poor's .
CUSIP stands for Committee on Uniform Security Identification Procedures , which was founded in 1964. This organization developed CUSIP codes in 1967. Initially, the code contained only numbers, later symbols were introduced into it for convenience. The last 9th character is a test character, sometimes ignored. For example, code 459200-10-1 is CUSIP for International Business Machines Corp. (NYSE: IBM).