Something that amazes me as I travel around the world is how much more “advanced” Australian banknotes are. In 1996 Australian became the first country to with a full set of circulating polymer banknotes. Polymer has a number great advantages over cotton fibre; they’re harder to counterfeit (due to restricted access to the material), harder to rip (though you can), keep cleaner and less wrinkled so can stay in circulation much longer and have the ability to build in features that make it much harder to counterfeit.
The Australian Reserve Bank has just released their “next generation” $5 note recently with a lot of new features including:
- holographic images
- tactile features ( for sight impaired people, worth noting that all notes currently in circulation are already different sizes)
- rolling colour effects
- microprinting
If you’re interested, have a look at the Reserve Bank of Australia website to see a list of all the features on the new notes.
Just don’t try copying them on your inkjet printer at home 🙂
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As an Australian, I’ve always loved their coins and banknotes compared to the US ones. Definitely polymer banknotes are way more durable and practically waterproof. Love the new design with a larger clear section. Extra brownie points for the added tactile features!