ISO 4217 states support for both alphabetic and numeric codes. rippled adheres to the ISO 4217 as stated in the Currency_Format on the wiki (https://ripple.com/wiki/Currency_Format) and there are trustlines out there with numeric currency codes.
The three-digit numeric code is useful when currency codes need to be understood in countries that do not use Latin scripts and for computerised systems. Where possible the 3 digit numeric code is the same as the numeric country code.