The ERC-20 introduces a standard for Fungible Tokens, in other words, they have a property that makes each Token be exactly the same (in type and value) of another Token.
For example, an ERC-20 Token acts just like the ETH, meaning that 1 Token is and will always be equal to all the other Tokens.[1]
Example functionalities ERC-20 provides:
- transfer tokens from one account to another
- get the current token balance of an account
- get the total supply of the token available on the network
- approve whether an amount of token from an account can be spent by a third-party account