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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.