OTTAWA — It took only 900 years, but paper money is fading away.
As a new technology, plastic bank notes, becomes more popular around the world, people will have to get used to money that is slipperier but less grimy and harder to fold into origami cranes but more likely to survive washing machines.
The decline of one of the world’s greatest inventions gained momentum on Wednesday when Britain announced that the British pound, a reserve currency that has been printed on cotton-based paper for 300 years, will be made from plastic. Britain is the latest nation to replace paper bills — starting with the £5 and £10 notes — with plastic ones. Canada and Australia have already made the switch, as have about two dozen other countries.
Others, although not the United States, are expected to follow suit. The reason is simple enough: Plastic — or polymer, as it is called — holds up better than paper. It is also a lot harder to counterfeit.
Governments worry about such things, with good reason. But that is not what people who must now use polymer bills are concerned about. When Canada began introducing polymer notes in 2011, people grumbled about their slipperiness and their foldability. They thought the plastic bills would melt on hot radiators or car dashboards. Some people convinced themselves that the notes were infused with a maple syrup scent, a notion that the Bank of Canada dismisses.
“One of the more improbable urban myths was that the intense heat in Canada caused the notes to melt,” Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England and previously governor of the Bank of Canada, said at a news conference on Wednesday announcing the notes. “I can assure you that wasn’t the case. Nor has the intense cold in Canada caused them to malfunction.”
If a car interior got hot enough to melt a bill — that would be 284 degrees Fahrenheit, or 140 degrees Celsius — the car’s interior plastics would begin to sag like a Salvador Dalí watch. Polymer bills can withstand temperatures as low as minus 103 Fahrenheit (minus 75 Celsius), said Richard Wall, the director of currency at the Bank of Canada.
In an unscientific test using a household oven set to 280 degrees Fahrenheit, a new Canadian 5-dollar note did not melt. But after eight minutes, it started to smell bad, shrink substantially and curl markedly. Its translucent security features also became opaque blobs.
Now that Canada has completed the transition, the complaints are fewer. But not everyone already using the new money is enthusiastic. Here in Ottawa, about a mile south of the future new home ofCanadian Bank Note Company, which prints the country’s bills, is Di Rienzo Grocery and Deli, where about 300 sandwiches are snapped up each day by a steady stream of customers for 5 Canadian dollars apiece — cash only.
In the two years since the Bank of Canada first introduced polymer bills, Paolo Di Rienzo, the owner of the impossibly crowded and chaotic deli, has developed a long list of grievances. He says the bills stick to one another. Yet he also says their slippery surface allows them to slip easily, unnoticed, out of pockets. The light, springy bills sometimes leap out of the cash register, according to Mr. Di Rienzo. And, he says, polymer does not really fold.
“You have to really watch when they give you the money and when you give the money back,” Mr. Di Rienzo said. “The other ones were much better, the regular ones.”
Overhearing Mr. Di Rienzo while waiting for a sandwich, Domenico Nicolo, a taxi driver, pulled out a 100-dollar polymer note and began rubbing what he said was its excessively slippery surface. “A lot of people complain about them,” Mr. Nicolo said of his customers. He now checks much more carefully for bills that have stuck together.
The only good thing Mr. Nicolo could say about polymer bills was that they survived accidental trips through washing machines.
One factor trumped everything when it came to Canada’s decision to use polymer. “It was all about improving the security of bank notes,” Mr. Wall said. “We had a fairly substantial level of counterfeiting in 2004.”
While Canada had already incorporated various holographic security devices in its paper bills, polymer enabled more complex protection. The new Canadian bills have a transparent window that contains large, color-shifting images of Parliament buildings and a portrait of Queen Elizabeth, Canada’s formal head of state, or famous Canadian politicians. Small metallic details, including the note’s denomination, also swirl around in the window. A circle of numbers appears in a second tiny window shaped like a maple leaf, the national symbol.
It was the success Canada and other countries have had in warding off counterfeiters that prompted the Bank of England to consider plastic currency, according to Victoria Cleland, the head of the bank’s notes division. “With bank notes, you want to understand how things have worked in true-life testing,” Ms. Cleland said.
The Bank of England made its decision on polymer notes after a long process in which the public was able to view and feel the bills during events at several malls and universities. The bank said 87 percent of the people it talked to supported the move.
The first polymer note in Britain, a “fiver,” will be released in 2016 and will feature Winston Churchill. A year later, Jane Austen will appear on a £10 note.
Mr. Carney reassured the British public that the queen’s visage would also appear on both notes. “Our polymer notes will combine the best of progress and tradition.”
He also said it would make the British pound decidedly more presentable. “We have a bit of an issue in this country with the tattiness of notes over time. You think about the £5 note: Quite often you get one you want to get rid of it as quickly as possible.”
“Which is a good thing from an economic perspective, to some extent,” he said with a laugh. LINK
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