Amir Safranovich, Head of Cash Management in the Currency Department at the Bank of Israel (BOI) introduced his presentation at the European Cash Cycle Seminar with the title ‘Cash: The Point of No Return’.

In the absence in 2021 of the HSP Awards, which are normally held three times a year to coincide with the three regional conferences, HSP organiser Reconnaissance International held a series of virtual awards instead.

2021 ended much as it began – disruptions, restrictions, new lockdowns, a virus on the march. However, the two trends where momentum is gathering and real change is beginning to happen are in access to cash and the green revolution.

The Bank of Canada (BOC) has a Currency Inventory Management Strategy (IMS) based on its high-speed sorters that capture the image of every banknote, including the serial number, along with the date the banknote was created, shipped from the central bank’s distribution sites and returned to them.

While cash transactions in Japan have been declining for some time, the reduction in opportunities to pay in cash and the increased use of ‘stay at home consumption’ during the pandemic has accelerated this decline. At the same time the ratio of banknotes to GDP has risen very significantly.

Many technologies and features with their roots in commercial printing have made, and continue to make, a substantial contribution to secure document production. However, these technologies have for the most part been concerned with producing visual colours, perceived by the unaided eye as conventional colour printing.

The Peoples Bank of China has issued a set of 20 yuan commemorative banknotes for the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games. The set, which includes a polymer note and a paper note, have been produced by China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation.

HM Government of Gibraltar has issued a new £5 note, replacing the previous, larger version. The new £5 was reduced in size to match the UK polymer £5 (albeit it remains on paper) and the colour changed to a vivid green.

CINEMA™ is a ground-breaking security feature for banknotes, launched in 2020 by CCL Secure. The feature uses advanced micro-optics to create 3D and novel effects such as movement, depth, float, flip effects, and magnification – all in normal lighting, without the need for UV or other special lighting techniques.

The International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) has announced the finalists in the 16th round of its Excellence in Currency Awards.

Bert van Ravenswaaij, the Royal Dutch Mint’s CFO, has been appointed Mint Master, and will take up the position at the beginning of January. He has been at the Royal Dutch Mint since 2017 and is responsible, among other things, for all issues for the collector's market, including commemorative coins and medals.

As part of our regular update on technologies and programmes for sustainability in the cash cycle, we report this month on the news that Banco de Cabo Verde has invested in an HKU 4510 from Swiss company Hunkeler Systeme for the secure, clean and energy efficient disposal of banknotes.

The emphasis on the recent round of IACA’s Excellence in Currency Awards, which were presented in October, was on innovations in response to the pandemic that will have lasting value. One such innovation was from KURZ in the form of its ‘Digital Design and Origination Approval Process’.

In the November issue of Currency News™, we covered initiatives in Australia and the Netherlands to assess the growing trend to digital payments and what these countries are doing, or beginning to think about doing, to ensure ongoing access to cash in a less-cash world.

On 21 December, the Central Bank of Lesotho (CBL) launched a significantly upgraded series of banknotes, with dynamic and innovative security threads and advanced security print features.

The Bank of Israel (BOI) held a special ceremony attended by the country’s president to launch a new NIS 5 coin in appreciation of the Israeli health and medical system for their contribution and struggle for the lives and health of Israel’s citizens during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A review of this year's headlines.

More details have emerged about the polymer trial in the Philippines. Delivery of the first batch will be next April. 500 million pieces of 1,000 piso polymer banknotes will be rolled out by the middle of 2022, and the pilot will last for three years.

Euro banknotes are facing a redesign for the first time since their launch two decades ago, with a plan to make the currency ‘more relatable to Europeans of all ages and backgrounds’.

After nearly 40 years at Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions, its Technical Director Johannes Schaede is retiring. Or, rather, semi-retiring – since from January 2022 he will be taking up a new supervisory position with Orell Füssli AG.

While the companies we feature in Industry Watch are being directly affected by COVID-19 trends and issues, they are also subject to market trends. COVID-19 has disrupted global economic stability – raw materials, energy and labour are all in short supply, and inflation is on the rise.

The value of cash in circulation (CIC) in Uganda grew by 5.6% in 2020/21 to 6.03 trillion Ugandan shillings. Of this, banknotes grew by 6% to 5.83 trillion shillings, and coins by 2.65% to 193 billion shillings.

The Bank of Mexico has issued a new 50 pesos, the sixth and final note in its new G series. The front of the new note shows the foundation of Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire which, according to legend, was established by the Mexica tribe in the place where they found an eagle devouring a snake.

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has made progress in 2020 with introducing and updating new systems to help with its cash management, according to its recently published annual report on cash operations.

The Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) has submitted its fiscal year 2022 budget request to Congress. The main component of the $1.9 billion requested funds is for special projects. Chief among them is $897 million for the Replacement Production Facility in Beltsville, Maryland.

The digital world has been with us for over 20 years, and it has brought significant benefits, usually related to convenience, choice and cost. Despite that, there are many examples of physical products that are recovering lost ground and increasing sales.

There is no longer any doubt that cash as a means of payment is declining – not just in relative but, increasingly, in absolute terms. The recent high demand for banknotes as a store of value only masks the reduction in their use for transactions.

The Dutch National Bank (DNB) spoke at the recent European Cash Cycle seminar (ICCOS) about the McKinsey study commissioned to consider the cash infrastructure that the Netherlands will need for the next 10 years.

At the latest count a third of all banknotes contain a diffractive feature, in the form of a patch, stripe or thread, 327 to be precise. According to Frank van der Horst of the DNB in his presentation at the recently-concluded Holography Conference, the feature is the second best in public recognition terms after watermarks – which makes one wonder why the other two thirds of banknotes don’t use one!

Infrared (IR) is part of the electromagnetic spectrum that lies immediately beyond red light and is therefore invisible to the naked eye. Because of this, IR inks are widely used in the banknote industry to create covert features that are both highly secure and machine readable, particularly by high speed systems.

CCL Secure’s GUARDIAN™ substrate was the catalyst for the development of the market for polymer banknotes over the past three decades, and it remains a key driver for its continuing growth.

Sales for De La Rue for the first half of 2021/22 increased by 0.9% to £179.2 million, compared with the first half of 2020/21, according to its recently published interim results. Adjusted operating profit increased by 13.4% to £17.4 million.

Hard on the heels of the announcement of a multi-million pound contract to supply Single Note Inspection Systems to India, Cash Processing Solutions (CPS) has announced two further major new contracts.

The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has announced Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) as one of the three winners of its Global CBDC Challenge, concluding the first phase of MAS’ study to explore possible retail CBDC solutions.

The National Bank of Romania has issued a new 20 lei banknote. It is intended to fill the gap between the 10 and 50 lei notes, and to honour a woman for the first time on a circulating note – Ecaterina Teodoroiu, a heroine of World War I.

Banknote holograms were winners in three of the five categories in the Excellence in Holography Awards 2021 organised by the industry trade body, the International Hologram Manufacturers Association (IHMA).

The EMEA Cash Cycle Seminar (ICCOS) was again held in a virtual format at the start of November. Despite this, the event attracted nearly 200 registrations based in around 40 countries and representing 77 different organisations.

The Bank of Canada (BOC) has a Currency Inventory Management Strategy (IMS) based on its high-speed sorters that capture the image of every banknote, including the serial number, along with the date the banknote was created, shipped from the central bank’s distribution sites and returned to them.

As noted in the recently published special report ‘Cash: A Roadmap to Sustainability’, there is an environmental cost to the removal and disposal of banknote waste during production and at their end of life.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (K&B BNS) has launched an app that is described as bridging the gap between the physical and the digital. Known as ValiCash™, the app not only helps identify but actually authenticates high security documents as well by scanning the document and giving either a ‘Pass’ or a ‘Fail’ response almost instantaneously.

Australia is often touted as one of the countries moving the fastest to becoming a cashless society. Whilst longer-term projections and data on payment habits support that view, recent figures from the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and the Royal Australian Mint (RAM) indicate the opposite over the last year, albeit the (hopefully) one-off consequence of COVID.

Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) has confirmed that it will trial a run of ‘a few hundred million pieces’ of the 1,000 piso on polymer during the first half of 2022.

Registration is now open for the new Optical & Digital Document Security™ (ODDS) conference, which will be in Vienna, Austria, 17-19 January 2022, with the programme available to view online at opticaldigitalsecurity.com.

Øystein Olsen, Governor of Norges Bank, has announced he will retire next February, a year before his second term is due to end. The Central Bank of Chile has appointed Beltrán de Ramón to the role of General Manager, responsible for the day-to-day operations. He replaces Alejandro Zurbuchen Silva, who has retired.

The Four Nations group was founded in 1978 and consists of five central bank members – the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Bank of Canada, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of England and Banco de México.

Cash Processing Solutions (CPS), the clue to whose activities is in its name, describes itself as one of the industry’s ‘best kept secrets’. Currency News spoke to Barrie Foley, to find out more about the company’s portfolio, its plans for growth, and where it sees itself and the cash industry going in the next few years.

META Materials Inc, a developer of high-performance functional materials and nanocomposites, has announced the completion of the acquisition of Nanotech Security Corp, which produces secure nano-optic security features for banknotes and other secure documents, in a deal valued at c. C$91 million. Nanotech has now been delisted from the TSX Venture Exchange.

Jura held a number of workshops on 5-6 October in Budapest as part of the newly-launched Jura Academy. This was one of the first physical events where customers and suppliers travelled to come together for the first time in the last 18 months or so, and representatives were in attendance from Austria, Czech Republic, France, Lithuania, Germany, Netherlands, Slovenia, Oman, Yemen, UAE, Saudi Arabia, the UK and, of course, Hungary itself.

The Royal Dutch Mint (RDM) is the latest mint to create a not-for-profit coin for charitable purposes, designing an exclusive coin in collaboration with the Smiley Movement. For every coin sold, it will donate a food box to the Foodbank Amsterdam at Christmas.

The Bank of Ghana has announced that 1 and 2 cedi banknotes are to be phased out in favour of coins. A bimetallic 1 cedi coin has been in circulation since 2007 and a 10-sided bimetallic 2 cedi coin was introduced in 2019. According to the Bank, the phase-out is due to heavy usage of the notes and the high costs of replacement compared with coins.

Nepal Rastra Bank began issuing a new series in 2020, starting with 1,000, 100 and 50 rupees. This year, despite the COVID restrictions, it has continued the programme with the issue of new 20, 10 and 5 rupee notes. The new 500 rupees is expected to follow in 2022.

The Holography Conference Online, the annual event for the worldwide holographic community, takes place 17-18 November, and this year currency-related presentations are strong on the agenda.

The World Banknote Summit (WBS) has announced the programme which, due to COVID, will be held online on 22-24 November. According to the organisers, the focus of WBS is not on touching all bases or providing a general overview, but about getting to the heart of the issues that are of paramount importance to the payments industry.

With COVID still disrupting travel plans, the 11th EMEA Cash Cycle Seminar (ICCOS) is being held virtually on 2-3 November. Over 200 attendees representing central banks, commercial banks, CIT and suppliers from more than 40 countries have registered for the two half days of thought leading presentations in an agenda dominated by cash users.

With the UN Climate Change conference, COP 26, taking place through early November, we thought it would be appropriate to review the environmental work of stakeholders in the cash industry over the last few years.

Experts believe that as much as 7% of the world’s gold may be contained within the circuit boards of e-waste, most of which ends up in landfill or is incinerated.

COP 26 is taking place next week in the UK. The leaders of the world will be in attendance (most of them at least – the Russian and Chinese presidents aren’t turning up) along with around 30,000 others – from negotiators and journalists to lobbyists, NGOs, businesses and even protesters – from 200 or so countries.

An early memory, when beginning my career at Crane Currency, was noticing long rows of steaming compost in the fields adjacent to the company’s banknote paper mills. I learned that much of this organic material was made up of solids from the papermaking process – cotton and flax ‘fines’ that, when mixed with other field and yard waste, produced a rich and valuable compost.

CashEssentials – the think tank specialising in payments and monetary systems – has launched the CashTech Forum to promote innovation and technology, thereby ensuring a sustainable and future-proof cash ecosystem.

We normally reserve the crystal ball gazing in Currency News™ for the end of the year, but the pandemic is no respecter of editorial calendars, and the consequences of the pandemic on our industry will last long beyond the next calendar year.

Goznak is a joint stock company in which the sole shareholder is the Russian government. It competes in both Russian and global markets for security products, with a portfolio ranging from banknotes and banknote paper, circulating and commemorative coins, identity documents, excise and postage stamps to, more recently, digital technologies.

Despite the obstacles associated with bringing a six-person technical team to Melbourne from Milan, not to mention the delays caused by the blockage of the Suez Canal, Parvis has successfully delivered a new ABACO-MES to Note Printing Australia within the planned four-month timeframe.

Cash Processing Solutions (CPS) has announced a multimillion-pound contract to supply Single Note Inspection Systems to the Security Printing and Minting Corporation of India Ltd (SPMCIL).

Following its AGM, the International Currency Association has elected three new Board members – Sam Keayes (Crane Currency), Etienne Couëlle (Oberthur Fiduciaire) and Roberto Salgari (Parvis).

Close on the heels of Guatemala, another country in Latin America that has issued a commemorative banknote to celebrates its bicentennial this year is the Bank of Mexico, with a new 20 peso. The latest GUARDIAN® polymer banknote issued in the Bank’s G series of notes, the new 20 pesos depicts the Army of the Three Guaranties (Religion, Union and Independence) entering Mexico City on 27 September 1821.

Japan’s National Printing Bureau has started producing new 10,000 yen banknotes, which are expected to enter circulation in the first half of 2024. A special ceremony was held to mark the start of production, attended by Finance Minister Aso Taro.

One of the highlights of the High Security Printing™ conferences each year are the regional awards for the best banknotes and ID documents. Thanks to COVID-19, no in-person HSP has been possible since the last event in Lisbon in March 2020. Reconnaissance International, organiser of the HSP events, has decided to bridge the gap by holding a series of virtual awards instead.

The International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) held its Excellence in Currency awards ceremony on 23 September, at which it presented the eight nominations and announced the winners of the ‘Best Currency Initiative Implemented in Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic’.

This is now the seventh Industry Watch, covering 21 months, where COVID-19 has been the main issue influencing market values and trends. Given the differing impact of COVID at a given time on regions and industries and, as we are entering the last quarter of 2021, it is useful to compare the performance year to date in both our usual selected world markets and separately in markets in some other countries.

Slovakia may be the next EU monetary union participant to drop the two lowest denomination euro coins. The Slovakian cabinet has issued a draft revision to the law on prices and, if passed by the Slovakian Parliament, the new pricing rules would become effective 1 January 2022.

De La Rue has announced a major upgrade to its existing facilities in Malta, to turn them into a 29,000 m² state-of-the-art manufacturing site. This investment is supported by Malta’s economic development agency, Malta Enterprise, and the Maltese government.

In 1987, Morocco established its own national banknote printing and minting company, Dar As-Sikkah, a department of the central bank (Bank Al-Maghrib) responsible for printing banknotes, minting coins, and producing secure documents.

2021 is a profoundly important year for much of Central America. Guatemala celebrates its bicentennial, recognising 200 years of independence from Spain, declared on 15 September 1821 in what is known as the Act of Independence of Central America.

COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on the global poor. It has also strongly impacted the lives of many women, and, as a consequence, children, the world over. For everyone thus affected by COVID-19, cash is often a lifeline, a means of support, of escape and maintaining personal freedom, of independence and of securing livelihoods.

The acceleration of the paradoxical cash developments during the ongoing pandemic, namely the decline in cash usage at point of sale accompanied by surge in cash holdings, was addressed in the June issue of Currency News.

A new report published last month – ‘Catch Me (If You Can): Assessing the Risk of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission via Euro Cash’ – by the European Central Bank (ECB) sought to answer key questions such as, how long do coronaviruses remain infectious on banknotes and coins? Is it possible to become infected through contact with cash?

This March, the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) issued its new $5 polymer banknote into circulation, completing the transition of the Eastern Caribbean dollar to De La Rue’s SAFEGUARD® polymer that began in 2019. According to the ECCB, the reasons for the transition were threefold – the environment, cost, and security.

The International Currency Association (ICA) was founded in 2016 to create a single, cohesive voice for the currency industry. Its principal objective has been, and continues to be, to make the case for cash as a public good at an industry, public and political level, and to demonstrate that cash is a vital part of the present and future payment landscape.

The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) is the latest central bank planning to issue polymer notes, with a commemorative note to mark the 75th anniversary of independence in 2022, and another to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the Bank in 2023.

With six weeks to go the CBDC Conference, which takes place online from 4-6 October, some 40 central banks have registered to attend and to listen to the 50 speakers who are confirmed in the programme.

Mint & Print (MAP), the biennial industry conference previously run by the Banque du Liban in Beirut, is back for 2021, but this time taking place in Dubai.

The International Banknote Designers Association (IBDA) has launched a series of New Perspective webinars to keep the industry focused on the wider perspectives regarding innovation and emerging trends, threats and challenges to banknotes, and the ‘bigger picture’ on payments and emerging technologies.

In the Banknote of the Month feature in last month’s Currency News™, we covered the Central Bank of Honduras’ new 200 lempira note which, among other features, is the first in the world to incorporate a registered Galaxy® thread. In this article, Louisenthal explains the significance of this new advance in thread technology.

Next month, Russian secure hologram company producer KRYPTEN will introduce the 100/50 Nobelists house note, featuring a new 3D-GRAM® CONTRUST photopolymer security patch for use on paper and polymer banknotes.

Jens Eberhardt, Managing Director of Cashinfrapro, has written a paper – ‘Green Cash Logistics’ – which considers how modern ways of working can reduce the environmental impact of the cash cycle. This article, which appeared in sister publication Cash & Payment News™, is a summary of the paper.

The recent meeting of the G7 (Group of Seven, an inter-governmental political forum consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US) held in the UK prompted De La Rue to look at the banknotes of the participating countries, which threw up some interesting divergences in their approaches to banknote security.

Cash & Payment News™ didn’t go on holiday in August. Instead, it has focused on the environment, the importance of inclusion, a paper by ESTA on access to cash, a country profile of cash in Rwanda, a study of cash in Italy and the review of a BIS paper on CBDC privacy.

The Central Bank of Chile is urging citizens to ferret out any spare change they may have lying around amid a national shortage of coins. In a series of recent Twitter posts, the central bank warned that ‘COVID-19 had affected the circulation of cash’ and hurt small retail vendors.

Optical security feature provider Nanotech Security Corporation has agreed to be acquired by Meta Materials, a developer of high-performance functional materials and nanocomposites, for nearly C$91 million.

CCL Secure is cementing its leading position in polymer production for banknotes with major additions to the capabilities of its production lines. The company is investing £9.5 million to include support for its latest two innovations.

Hungary’s central bank – Magyar Nemzeti Bank – has released a series of six new commemorative coins to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the introduction of the forint.

The Bank of Guatemala has published the designs of its new commemorative 20 quetzales banknote and 1 quetzal coin marking the country’s bicentennial anniversary. This will be the first commemorative banknote in the Bank’s history.

The German company ZEISER, which provides impact and non-impact serialisation solutions and services to the security printing industry, has acquired the document inspection and track and trace software solutions of Inspectron, UK.

The next webinar from the MDC (Mint Directors Conference) takes place on 16 September on the topic of ‘What is the Cost to Consumers and Society of Cash v the Cost of ‘Electronic’ / Digital Payments?’

On 1 November the latest UN Climate Change meeting, COP 26, starts in Glasgow in the UK. We can expect significant press interest and focus on the event in particular, and the environment in general.

Giesecke and Devrient (G+D) has invested in UK-based FNA (Financial Network Analytics), a deep technology firm specialising in advanced network analytics and simulations.

To ensure adequate supply of cash during the pandemic, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) outsourced 62.2% of banknotes from foreign printers in 2020, printing only 34.7% locally.

The design of the next generation of US currency is underway, and the Bureau of Engraving and Printing (BEP) is now looking for new ways to integrate covert machine-readable features into future versions that could be used to detect and deter counterfeiting.

The banknote paper manufacturer Portals has signed a licence agreement with the Banque de France (BdF) for its multi-layer banknote technology, EverFit®.

Launched in 2020, CCL Secure’s new CINEMA™ security feature is gaining many admirers for its ability to combine 3D style depth with movement in a single feature, says the company.

Spectra Systems Corporation launched its novel approach to cleaning soiled banknotes with the launch of its Aeris™ system in 2014 (See CN July 2014).

SPARK® has proved to be one of the most successful and widely used anti-counterfeiting features for banknotes since its launch in 2006.

The Bank of Scotland, one of Scotland’s three note issuing banks, has released its new polymer £50 note, featuring Sir Walter Scott and the Falkirk Wheel, a rotating boat lift in central Scotland that connects two major canals.

The Banco Central de Reserva del Perú has unveiled the designs of its new banknote series with modern designs, new motifs and leading-edge security features.

The Republic of Honduras is located in Central America, bordering on many countries – to the west Guatemala, to the southwest El Salvador and to the southeast Nicaragua.

The window in the polymer banknote is proven as a strong security feature. This article lays out why. Windows are a simple way to authenticate a banknote and come with a clear public education message.

In the July edition of Cash & Payment News™ we report a mixed picture about the health of cash.

The International Association of Currency Affairs (IACA) 2021 award scheme, which recognises the measures developed by organisations across the currency community to deal with, respond to and mitigate the impacts of COVID, has received eight nominations.

Michael Lambert has recently retired as Director of Banknotes for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he was in charge all aspects of the issuance of US currency.

The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) was founded 30 June 1921, shortly after the end of World War I. Its primary objective was to restore and maintain order in the issue and circulation of domestic currency and restore the gold standard to the pre-World War I rate of exchange.

‘The past year has been an extraordinarily challenging one for the world as a whole, and The Royal Mint has been no exception’. These were the opening words in the Chairman’s Report for 2020/21.

The proposed relocation of the Banque de France’s banknote printing plant has been put back to 2026.

The Central Bank of Honduras has announced that a new 200 lempira note will be issued in September. Notes of 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 and 500 lempiras currently circulate in Honduras. The last note to be introduced – the 500 – was in 1997.

Public support for the euro has reached an all-time high, according to the European Commission's latest Eurobarometer survey.

Goznak has acquired Bank Innovation Systems (BIS), the Russian supplier of banknote inspection and processing equipment, in a deal signed at the start of June.

Counterfeiting is a sensitive subject. Without counterfeiters most of us would not have a job, but central banks have a difficult line to walk. They need the public to check their banknotes, but equally they need the public to trust and have confidence in their currency.

Glory’s annual results, announced last month, showed a 3% drop in sales to ¥217 billion, and a 20% drop in operating income to ¥14 billion.

The Mexican President has nominated his finance minister and economist Arturo Herrera Gutiérrez as the next Governor of the Bank of Mexico, to replace the incumbent, Alejandro Díaz de León, whose mandate is not being renewed.

The ATM Security Association (ASA) has launched a new worldwide Crisis and Crime Management Intelligence System (CCMIS).

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has published its 2020/21 Annual Report which saw a small rise in demand for banknotes and the RBI continuing with its programme of developing how it does its business.

It is a challenge to introduce minimum quality standards for banknote fitness. There are a number of good examples of how to manage machines that handle banknotes, whether in a cash centre or elsewhere, the European Central Bank being an example. But reaching those who handle and work with cash without the benefit of machines is more difficult.

Cash in the UK is in an interesting place at the moment. The cash paradox – higher demand, lower use – is very much in evidence, as are growing concerns about the future of cash allied to branch and ATM closures, concerted moves from the government downwards to encourage people to pay digitally, and what the cash infrastructure could and should look like in the future.

The week before the issue of the new £50, the Bank of England published its annual report for 2020/21, which showed an increase in notes in circulation of £10.3 billion (14%). It credited this increase to the launch of the new polymer £20 note in February 2020 and the pandemic. These figures are quite a contrast to the Reserve Bank of India’s annual report, also issued recently, which saw a 7.2% increase.

The introduction of the new £50 was undertaken by the Bank of England Governor, Andrew Bailey, at a special ceremony at Bletchley Park, once the top-secret home of the World War Two codebreakers and where Alan Turing, the subject of the note, carried out his most famous work breaking the Enigma code.

The lockdowns and travel restrictions caused by the pandemic have had a great influence on retail shopping and payment habits. Besides the increase in online shopping, the growing use of contactless and mobile payments media have decreased the use of cash in transactions. Several recent payment studies confirm these developments.

This is now the sixth Industry Watch, covering 18 months, where COVID-19 has been the main factor influencing market values and trends, both directly and indirectly.

Gleitsmann Security Inks (GSI) has launched what it terms the ‘world’s first traffic light for banknotes’ in the form of mouve ^GSI, a unique security feature that will help safeguard cash and other security documents using luminescent colour effects.

I have had the dubious pleasure of having been part of G+D’s global Corona crisis team for the past 15 months, during which time I have had the chance to gain live insight into what has been happening with the more than 11,500 people at the more than 50 sites of our company group worldwide and at our customer sites in almost all countries on this planet during the crisis.

This month’s Cash & Payment News™ focuses on the environment, research on cash usage, payment challenges and token-based Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs).

The Bundesbank reported in August 2020 a marked increase in counterfeits where no attempt had been made to mimic the security features. There is a high level of trust in the authenticity of euro banknotes.

COVID has given companies the opportunity to reflect and look at sustainability and the environment with more pressing urgency. There have been webinars and virtual conferences where this topic has been headlining, with paper manufacturers in particular demonstrating their activities to reduce carbon footprints and ensure the future and life cycle of banknotes is protected.

After several months of a COVID-enforced digital only publication of Currency News™, we are happy to announce the resumption of the hard-copy distribution of the newsletter from July. Thank you for your patience during the disruption and we ask a little more forbearance as delivery services attempt to return to something like their pre-COVID levels.

Currency Research has announced a webinar focusing on ‘Currency Use and Banknote Technology’, in support of the combined Banknote & Currency Conference.

The Bank of Albania has unveiled the next two denominations in its new series – the 1,000 and 10,000 lekës, which go into circulation at the end of June.

The think-tank CashEssentials in collaboration with Wipplay, a community platform dedicated to photography, is back this year for its fourth photo contest, this time inviting participants to focus on imaging the future through the medium of currency.

Louisenthal has added a new security thread to its portfolio based on its RollingStar® technology, which combines two security technologies – ColourShift for colour changes and micro-mirrors for dynamic effects arranged according to highly complex algorithms. For the new thread, RollingStar® i+, the two technologies have, through intensive research and in conjunction with magnetics for machine-read, been elevated to a new level.

The Deputy Chairman of the Bank of Russia, Mikhail Alekseev, has provided local media with more details of the new Russian series, which will start going into circulation with the new 100 rubles in 2022. It will be followed by the 1,000 and 5,000 rubles in 2023, the 500 rubles in 2024 and 10 and 50 rubles in 2025. The 200 and 2,000 rubles, both introduced in 2017, will not be included in the new series.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) is celebrating not just its 70th anniversary, and the 30th anniversary of the National Banknote Printing Plant, but is also marking its 18th year of using polymer banknotes from CCL Secure.

The Qatar Central Bank formally launched its 5th Series of banknotes on Qatar National Day, 18 December 2020, replacing the 4th Series that was issued in 2003. The Qatar Central Bank wished to modernise the banknotes and to incorporate the latest security features. The new series, designed by De La Rue in close co-operation with the Qatar Central Bank, has achieved this whilst maintaining a thematic link to previous designs.

Following the success of the Future of Cash online event in February 2021, the organisers – AGIS Consulting and CashEssentials – are continuing the conversation and providing a coherent story of today’s cash challenges and tomorrow’s opportunities.

The MDC has announced the new dates and locations for the Mint Directors Conference.

In November 2021 the UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, will take place in Glasgow. Currency News™ has started work to issue a paper, ‘Cash: A Roadmap to Sustainability’, ahead of the conference.

Reconnaissance International, organisers of the Optical Document Security™ and Digital Document Security™ conferences, have announced that these are to be combined into one new ‘super-event’ for physical, digital and virtual documents – Optical & Digital Document Security™ – which will take place in-person in Vienna from 17-19 January 2022.

The Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) conference has now moved wholly online on 4-6 October 2021. Registration is now open.

This month we highlight a number of challenging areas for digital payments, rising card fees in the US and Germany, research that suggests people select banks based on branch proximity and that the pain of paying leads people to spend more and make unwise choices.

As is widely recognised, the invention of the ATM has been one of the single most significant developments in the history of money – providing it with the core attributes of near-universal availability and convenience that continue to this day.

In December 2020, the global cash community joined forces in an initiative called HUMANIA to support people who have been most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whilst the focus on cash is generally concentrated on substrates and features, production and circulation, the end of life is also key as regards the secure, clean and efficient disposal of both waste and notes no longer fit for circulation.

CCL Secure has unveiled SPARTAN™ – an ‘ultra-durable’ new polymer substrate that has been designed specifically to provide a new option for central banks and issuing authorities who have low denomination, high transaction velocity denominations that sit on the cusp of the note/coin boundary.

COVID19 led to a decline in the number of counterfeit banknotes in 2020. Or did it?

It was only a matter of time! One of the claimed benefits of polymer is that it is more resistant to counterfeiting and hence more secure, and the figures bear that out.

The Mint of Finland, the leading exporter of coins and blanks with 99% of sales coming from overseas customers (up from 93% in 2019), reported near-flat consolidated revenue of €57.2 million in 2020, and an operating loss of €5.1 million (versus €1.4 million the previous year).

The Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) has announced its financial results for 2020. Overall, sales were boosted by 74% due to booming demand for gold bullion products. However, the increased revenue was matched by increased costs, so did not result in a corresponding increase in profit. Instead, profits were lower by 35% due to lower revenues from other parts of the business, among them circulating coins.

De La Rue’s results for 2020-21 were not expected to be easy to understand or compare with the previous year(s) due to all the changes that took place, continued this last year and will continue, albeit to a much lesser extent this coming financial year. However, the main takeaway is that the company is alive and well and positive about its future.

Royal Dutch Kusters Engineering, the oldest manufacturer of currency destruction systems, is celebrating its 110th anniversary this year, on 9 June.

Swedish cash management service provider Loomis has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire certain assets and liabilities of SecurePost AG, a subsidiary of Die Schweizerische Post (Swiss Post Group).

There is much talk and activity around Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) at the moment, particularly retail CBDCs. As one reads the papers and listens to the frequent webinars about them, it is striking that there is a requirement for CBDCs to replicate the performance of cash. And that is clearly proving a challenge.

Despite the increase in production at the US Mint, coins for general circulation are still struggling to keep pace with public demand, forcing the Federal Reserve to again limit orders from its customers, especially for dimes and quarter dollars. It is monitoring its inventories to determine whether order limits will be extended to cents and 5 cent coins as well.

G+D has also announced that it is joining forces with the Swedish fintech start-up Doconomy to enhance payment solutions with digital sustainability-oriented tools.

Japan will begin issuing newly redesigned ¥500 coins from around November, the Finance Ministry has said, after their initial release in the first half of the fiscal year from April was postponed due to the pandemic, and in particular delays to updates to ticket and automated teller machines.

Mexico’s new 100 peso banknote has beaten more than 100 other candidates to win the prestigious Banknote of the Year Award for 2020, awarded by the International Bank Note Society (IBNS).

Late last year Danmarks Nationalbank began the upgrade of its banknote series with a new 500 kroner, setting the scene for more advanced security features across all its banknotes.

The evolution of the security thread has happened at breakneck speed, with the pace accelerating in recent years. Today 95% of all paper banknotes contain a security thread and the options available can feel bewildering even to those familiar with banknotes. There is now a new way to make sense of all this – read the just published ‘Security Threads for Banknote’ report from Currency News™.

A number of central banks are investing time and money to understand the life cycle and performance of banknotes based on tracking the changes in individual banknote detector scores over time. It does this by reading banknote serial numbers, and their detector data, and analysing the results. Given the number of detectors on a sorting machine, the volume of data generated reaches the realms of ‘big data’.

As part of a series of webinars from the World Banknote Summit, Jacques Lang presented for Seprinto & Partners (S&P) three examples of how they have helped banknote printers optimise their production, reducing their consumables and waste.

At the recent Digital Document Security Online conference, held at the end of March, Sina Gebrodt, a final-year student at the Design Academy Eindhoven, reported on the project that she and Madison Bucher, a user-experience designer, had undertaken on the future of banknotes. This project was sponsored by Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (K&B).

In last month’s Currency News™, Clemens Berger of Louisenthal wrote about the importance of embedded security features and how they are the benchmark for the overwhelming majority of banknotes. This month, he follows up with more information specifically on how their substrate family – Hybrid ADDvance® – is part of that story.

The Four Nations group was founded in 1978 and consists of five central bank members – the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Bank of Canada, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank of England and Banco de México. The group is a forum in which its members share information and experiences on banknote development, issuance and distribution, counterfeit deterrence, and relevant technical studies.

For many people, their perception of plastic is negative. Plastic is one of the world’s ‘bad guys’ these days, with newspaper headlines and TV programmes dominated by images of polluted oceans or mountainous garbage dumps. But, as always, the truth is more nuanced than the ‘all plastic is bad’ trope might have you believe.

The UK was the first major economy to pass laws for net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and has cut emissions by more than 40% since 1990. It’s also committed to reduce its emissions at least 68% compared to 1990 levels – this is the fastest rate of reductions from a major economy to date and will help contribute towards the international goal of limiting the global temperature rise to below 1.5°C.

With a climate goal of a 25% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2022 (base year 2016), Giesecke+Devrient (G+D) and its papermaking and feature subsidiary Louisenthal state that they are making a significant contribution towards climate protection – surpassing the goal, and achieving a reduction of 32% in 2020.

Portals published its Sustainability Report on April’s Earth Day. With two UK paper mills, one at Overton making banknote paper based on cotton and one at Bathford making security papers based on wood pulp, sustainability is potentially a big issue for the company.

As described in April's Comment article, other than the current pandemic, the main topic of major global concern – and one that will endure long after the pandemic has (we hope) receded – is the environment.

Schuler Press, the leading manufacturer of coin production equipment, has reached a major milestone with the sale this month of its 1,000th high performance minting press.

The year of the pandemic saw Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) take a wide range of steps to ensure payments worked effectively, according to its 2020 Annual Report.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw payment behaviour deviate markedly from historical trends. Unsurprisingly this features heavily in the Bank of Canada’s 2020 annual report. On one hand it put pressures on its cash inventories as the Bank moved fast to boost stocks at its regional distribution centres. Its operations centres had to respond with agility and to innovate to ensure cash supply was uninterrupted.

Giesecke+Devrient, like so many other companies, has faced considerable challenges over the past year. But through effective cost management and by increasing the margins in its business, it was able to boost its operating result for 2020 by 13% to €153 million on revenue of €2.3 billion, which was only slightly down (-5%) on last year. The net profit for the year was €43 million.

Brink’s has bought PAI, Inc, the largest privately-held provider of ATM services in the US, for $213 million. PAI offers managed services and tools for ATM owner-operators, as well as owning its own ATMs. It writes its own software, providing cash management and maintenance solutions for ATMs.

The last year has been dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic, which continues to surprise and to wreak huge damage. But perhaps there is another global issue that is just as urgent – namely, climate change and, as part of that, environmental sustainability.

The success of the new polymer series and falling transactional demand are behind the Bank of England’s proposal to close its regional cash distribution centre in the northern city of Leeds, in February 2023.

Portals, the second largest commercial banknote and security paper manufacturer, has entered into an agreement with Fedrigoni, one of the leading European producers of specialty papers and self-adhesive labels, to buy its security business based in Bollate in Italy, which specialises in security threads and foils.

This is now the fifth Industry Watch where COVID-19 has been the main influence on company performance and market trends, and this situation is unlikely to change any time soon.

The Central Bank of Iraq has added a feature to its banknotes to protect them from bacteria and viruses, including the coronavirus strain. The feature is not named, but is described as a biological pesticide developed by international companies specialised in printing banknotes, and is presumed to be incorporated in a coating/varnish. The notes containing the feature will be put into circulation soon.

The Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB) issued its new $5 polymer banknote into circulation this month, completing the transition of its new family onto SAFEGUARD® polymer banknotes.

One increasingly common counterfeit technique is harvesting – the act of taking a security feature from a lower value object and incorporating it into a counterfeit banknote of higher value. There are several ways to minimise harvesting, including making each security feature bespoke.

When a polymer banknote is produced, a number of opacification layers are printed onto the core substrate so that it can accept the traditional banknote printing processes such as litho, intaglio, screen and letterpress printing.

Cash & Payment News™ this month follows two main themes, payments and cash in a pandemic, along with a range of CashTech and other stories.

The technology platforms used for banknotes continues to rise ever higher, for all security levels – 1, 2 and 3. Challenging and beating the counterfeiter is central to the design, functionality and security of banknotes. And we note that with a well-defined security feature matrix to raise the bar, there can be success.

According to Jura, COVID-19 has required a lot of strategic rethinking. The company’s core way of conducting business has always been in-person, building rapport with current and future clientele via personal contact.

Ergonomics and automation are well-known terms these days. But where does the banknote industry stand in these areas? Do printworks have to address both areas, which benefit employees and companies alike?

The Federal Reserve of New York has announced the appointment of Naureen Hassan as its First Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer (COO). She replaces Michael Strine, who retired at the end of February.

Three years ago, the family-owned security ink business Luminescence was acquired by Sun Chemical, the world’s largest manufacturer of inks and pigments to create, in its words, a new global player and an enormous growth platform for the company in the $2.7 billion security ink market. Since then, whilst the company is now called Luminescence Sun Chemical Security, it seems to be very much business as usual in the highly specialised security ink market, where technical requirements are exceptionally demanding and competition relatively limited.

In 2014, Spectra Systems (Spectra) launched Aeris™, a unique new banknote disinfection system which uses carbon dioxide in a supercritical phase to penetrate banknotes and remove oxidised oils and other contaminants, effectively ‘washing’ the notes with gas.

Despite Sweden being in the vanguard of the cashless movement, its central bank – Sveriges Riksbank – is opening new offices to handle notes and coins.

Revenue for 2020 of €1.03 billion exceeded Koenig & Bauer’s guidance of €900-950 million, but was €217.2 million (17 .4%) lower than that achieved in 2019, according to its recently announced results.

G4S shareholders have accepted a £3.8 billion from Allied Universal, bringing to a close a months-long battle between two firms to take control of the security services company.

The state-run Korean Minting, Security Printing and ID card Operating Corp (KOMSCO) has announced the implementation of an emergency management system in the face of losses sustained last year.

The COVID-19 pandemic is a prime factor in companies’ financial results for the last year, and for most its impact has been negative. Orell Füssli’s results are no exception. In an opening statement it said the company ‘held its own in a difficult market environment in 2020. Although sales and profitability were lower than in the previous year and cash flow was negative due to high capital expenditure, our balance sheet allows us to pay a dividend to our shareholders’.

Prosegur Compañia de Seguridad (Prosegur) and its listed subsidiary Prosegur Cash have reached an agreement for the acquisition, by the former, of most of the process outsourcing and value-added services business developed by Prosegur AVOS, which was founded and is owned by the latter.

The National Bank of Ukraine, the ECB and Federal Reserve, Crane Currency and CCL Secure are among the winners in the Central Banking Awards 2021, presented annually by the Central Banking Journal and which this year have nearly doubled in number to 29.

The Board of the Central Bank of Russia has issued its ‘Guidelines for Cash Circulation Development in 2021-2026’. Its over-arching goals are to ensure the stability of cash circulation, optimise costs based on the development of technical infrastructure, as well as the formation of partnerships with banks for holding stocks of banknotes.

Russian banknote printer and papermaker Goznak is the latest in a series of currency suppliers to move into digital payments, having signed an agreement to acquire a stake of 50% plus one share in fintech company Preprocessing Settlement Center JSC (JSC PRT), which operates under the Uniteller trademark.

Cryptocurrencies, the best known of which is Bitcoin, exist almost entirely in the digital sphere, connecting with the physical world only if the owner writes down their digital key or if they use one of the growing number of ATMs where they can exchange their cryptocurrency for physical cash. A new venture, Noteworthy, is looking to change that, embedding cryptocurrencies into what will look and feel like a traditional banknote.

Globalisation is the result of the ability to move and communicate easily with others leading eventually to global cultural, political and economic integration.

The Bank of England has unveiled the design for the new £50 which, when it goes into circulation in June, will compete the transition to a new all-polymer series.

At Intergraf's just-concluded Currency+Identity online conference, Bernadette O’Brien presented the work done by the European Central Bank (ECB) on improving the environmental sustainability of euro banknotes. From its first life cycle assessment (LCA) of the first euro series in 2004 through to its 2020 Product Environmental Footprint project, the ECB has steadily worked to ensure the euro banknotes are ‘good citizens’.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), something of a buzzword in ‘corporate speak’, is defined as a self-regulating business model that helps a company be socially accountable—to itself, its stakeholders, and the public. Which sounds great, as indeed it is. But isn’t really anything new.

The Central Bank of Iran has unveiled the designs of three new banknotes as part of the transition of Iran’s currency from the rial to the toman. Under the changes, four zeroes will be knocked off the rial and it will be renamed.

The Central Bank of Libya has issued a new 5 dinar note on De La Rue’s SAFEGUARD® polymer substrate, its launch coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the 17 February 2011 Revolution. It is the country’s second polymer note, the first – the 1 dinar – having been issued in 2019.

ln celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Modern Omani Renaissance, the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) has launched a new series. Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf, sharing its borders with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The first national currency was introduced in 1970, replacing the Gulf rupee. Its current name, the Omani rial, was adopted in 1972. Coins were introduced earlier, in 1941.

The theme of February’s Cash and Payment News (CPN) is very much on the future of cash and payments, considering as it does two sides of a coin, namely evidence of cash under pressure and the robust activity underway to keep it available, useful and preferred.

Banknote Industry News (BIN) surveyed 36 central banks at the end of 2020 with a wide range of questions. Two thirds of those surveyed did not change their banknote handling practices in the pandemic, neither disinfecting nor quarantining notes. The 25% who have changed their practices, continue with them. Although a quarter said that trust and confidence in banknotes had been reduced by the pandemic, 69% said there was no change.

As relayed to Currency News in this month’s On the Record, the Chairman of China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation (CBPM), Mr Yang Lijie, is optimistic about the future of cash, proud of the achievements of his organisation in terms of quality, sustainability and CSR, and willing to make more friends and more partners with the industry around the world.

A new special report, ‘Security Threads for Banknotes’, is about to be released. Published by Currency Publications, it follows the successful and informative Special Report ‘Diffractive Features on Banknotes’. Published in a similar format, the 130-page report is available in both printed and digital form.

Banknotes have become highly sophisticated, with a massive range of machine readable features to fight the counterfeit threat. At the same time, says Louisenthal, it has also been creating innovative Level 1 features, to stop the counterfeit threat at the first pass, which are memorable, simple to use, visible even under poor lighting conditions and which, at the same time, also send a positive theme into the local community.

Royal Dutch Kusters Engineering (Kusters) – which specialises in banknote destruction systems - has expanded its portfolio with its new range of Air Purification systems, in response to the importance of a healthy indoor environment in offices and cash processing areas.

Actemium Cournon Engineering is a subsidiary of VINCI Energies, specialising in industrial engineering that accelerates manufacturing integration and control using new technologies. Based 15km from the Banque de France’s printing plant, it was hired to work on five key projects, two in the paper mill and three in the printworks.

In the last quarter of last year, the UK bank NatWest established three cross industry working groups to improve the environmental performance of the UK’s cash cycle. Involving 36 organisations, the working groups looked at energy, plastics and CO2 to establish best practice and to drive change.

At the Future of Cash conference, Chris Forero-Slee introduced his business, Shrap. As he said, he does not expect to be popular with those who make their living from or who like coins. Shrap (the company presumably takes its name from shrapnel, ie. fragments of shells or bullets but also a colloquial term for small change) is a solution that offers an alternative to coins, which they regard as a ‘pain point’ in payments.

Competition creates energy and change. It can be argued that 2020 was the year where the impact of there being two suppliers of polymer substrate in the banknote market started to be seen. The take-up of polymer by central banks accelerated, while investment brought new security features to market, more capacity and more recycling capability.

COVID-19 has impacted cash usage in a number of ways. Some were inevitable, such as a reduction in use due to the move to online shopping and lockdowns. But one was avoidable and has unfairly and negatively affected both the use and perception of cash, and that was that it carried, and was capable of transmitting, the coronavirus.

The COVID-19 pandemic has had massive impact at a global scale. If mostly negative, it has also generated an incredible surge of solidarity. Governments, associations and individuals have all in their own way launched initiatives to help those most in need. Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions along with the banknote industry have played their part too.

China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation (CBPM) is the world’s largest manufacturer for banknotes and coins – not only producing more currency than any other printer or mint, but also offering the full gamut of production and security technology through a network of subsidiaries dedicated to R&D, features, substrates and ink, minting, printing and processing equipment, as well as production itself.

The reputation of the Reserve Bank of Australia’s Craigieburn site in Melbourne as the world’s most unique banknote precinct has been strengthened with the arrival of SICPA Australia, which is basing its headquarters there. Note Printing Australia (also located on the site) has a long-term supply agreement with SICPA, and the RBA is committed to the use of SICPA proprietary features such as SPARK Live™ on its banknotes for the foreseeable future.

2021 started with the CEO of Koenig & Bauer, Claus Bolza-Schünemann, handing over the baton to Dr Andreas Plesske, board member responsible for Koenig & Bauer’s Special segment, which includes Banknote Solutions.

Prosegur, including its cash business Prosegur Cash, is the first security group to sign up to ‘The Climate Pledge’, a commitment to achieve net zero carbon by 2040. The Climate Pledge initiative was created by Amazon and Global Optimism in 2019 and 53 companies are now signed up to it.

January and February are when six of the leading listed companies in cash report their annual results for the previous year. The time last year, all but one reported strong results and optimistic outlooks.