Bulgaria has signed a memorandum of understanding with the European Commission and the Eurozone group president, paving the way for the country to start minting its own euro coins once it receives approval for eurozone membership.

Sustainability as a concept has been best defined by the United Nations Brundtland Commission as 'meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'.

In the full year, only three markets were less than 10% lower compared with the beginning of the year, eight lost between 10% and 20%, and three lost between 20% and 30%.

Kusters, a family-owned company founded in 1911, has been at the forefront of destruction and shred handling equipment for both banknotes and coins since the 1970s, and has an installed base of more than 700 systems in various applications in over 80 countries.

The BEAC (Banque Centrale des Etats de l’Afrique Centrale) has now introduced its new series of banknotes, coinciding with the 50th anniversary of its foundation.

A review of this year's headlines.

Digimarc Corporation has announced a five-year extension of its agreement with the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence Group, comprising 35 of the world’s central banks.

There was a palpable sense of optimism as 2021 concluded that – despite disruptions, restrictions, new lockdowns and a virus on the march again – things were finally improving and would start going back to where they were, or at the very least, to somewhere different but nevertheless better than the previous two years.

The European Union has announced a set of new directives to limit the amount of cash and crypto transactions in a move, it says, that will crack down on money laundering and terrorist financing.

A group of organisations from both the coin and banknote sectors have joined forces to support a first-of-its-kind in-depth study into the environmental impact of cash versus digital payments.

The new look of banknotes featuring the image of King Charles has been unveiled by the Bank of England. The portrait will be the only change to existing designs of £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes and will start to enter circulation from mid 2024.

In November 2022, Algeria’s central bank, the Banque d’Algérie, issued a new 2,000 dinar banknote to commemorate 60 years of Algerian independence and to mark the occasion of the 31st Summit of the League of Arab States, which was hosted in Algiers.

Nominations have opened for the 17th round of the ‘Excellence in Currency Awards’ run by IACA (the International Association of Currency Affairs) and sponsored by Currency News™.

Banque du Liban is issuing an updated 100,000 livres banknote as part of an ongoing upgrade that has seen the replacement of the threads in several of the notes in the series with RAPID® micro-optics threads from Crane.

CCL Secure has won an Energy Management Award, together with its sustainability partner Verco, at the 23rd Energy Institute Awards ceremony, which was held on 23 November in London.

Len Olijar, Director of the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing, is retiring after more than 34 years with the organisation.

The Qatar Central Bank has issued a commemorative banknote to mark the FIFA World Cup, which is taking place in the country from 18 November to 20 December.

De La Rue’s results for the first half of the current financial year – 2022/23 – saw sales and profits fall, along with a reduced overall profit guidance for the full year.

Koenig & Bauer Banknote Solutions (KBBNS) recently announced that it is moving into the cash innovation space by developing a family of ‘bridging technologies’ to enable the physical banknote product to connect to digital data ecosystems.

A year ago, the white paper, ‘Cash: A Roadmap to Sustainability,’ recorded a pleasing level of activity and progress across the cash industry on environmental sustainability, with plenty of evidence of organisations striving and achieving to do better.