Canadians will soon hold in their hot little hands new state-of-the-art polymer bank notes that are being touted as among the most technologically advanced in the world.
“Secure. Durable. Innovative” is the Bank of Canada’s tagline in its promotion of the new bills, which have built-in features that make them hard to counterfeit.
To provide a variety of security features, traditional printing techniques are being combined with new inks, polymer materials, transparent areas, and detailed metallic elements.
Feel and look are the major marks of distinction of the new design. The notes will have a smooth texture since they consist of a single piece of polymer. Raised ink will be present on the numbers denoting the value of the bills, as well as on the shoulders of the prime minister’s image.
“These printing methods—together with the material on which they’re applied—create the feel we associate with bank notes,” says a Bank of Canada press release. “With polymer as the base material for this new series of bank notes, the feel of our money will change but be just as easy to handle.”
Two transparent windows are another feature. On the front of the bills, the top left corner has a transparent frosted maple leaf window, while a larger transparent window on the right contains a duplicate of the main portrait on top, with the Parliament Hill Peace Tower in metallic at the bottom.
Each window serves as security feature. The maple leaf window is imprinted with hidden numbers that become visible if directed at a single-point light source. In the large window, the metallic images of the Peace Tower and the portrait duplicate change colour when tilted in the light.
The new bills also contain “note reader” features designed to assist the visually impaired. The note readers were developed by Ottawa-based Brytech, which specializes in producing innovative electronic products for the blind and visually impaired.
Durability is another major advantage the polymer notes will have over the old cotton-paper version. According to the Bank of Canada, the new notes will last 2.5 times longer than the old ones, reducing processing and replacement costs.
There are currently 290 million cotton-paper one hundred dollar bills in circulation that will need replacing.
“Canadians may be surprised to learn that despite all of today’s alternatives to cash, the demand for bank notes continues to increase. Economic growth is one factor that affects the demand, but the driving force is replacement. It’s a continual process of calculating the volume of new notes needed to replace worn and damaged ones,” the release says.
The new 100 dollar bank notes will enter into circulation next month. The 50 dollar bills will start circulating in March 2012, and the 5, 10 and 20 denominations will be released sometime in late 2013.
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