POLYMER BANKNOTE INK EASILY ERASED

IT was billed as the high-tech durable banknote which would last twice as long as the old fiver.

But now it appears that there could be a serious flaw with the new plastic £5 note as it can be wiped almost totally clean of ink using only a simple pencil eraser.

Print Centre Manager Stuart McLean was experimenting with the note and decided to put it to the test using the type of rubber normally deployed to eradicate pencil marks.

To his surprise the everyday item was capable of scoring off large parts of the note's blue dye, leaving only security numbers and the see-through hologram behind.

The polymer note, which has been issued by Royal Bank of Scotland, Clydesdale Bank, Bank of Scotland and the Bank of England, is smaller than traditional fivers and said to last 2.5 times longer.

Produced from a thin, transparent and flexible film made of polypropylene, it is designed to not get dirty or crease as much as cotton paper notes, which have been in use for more than 100 years.

Banknote manufacturer De La Rue say it can survive a spin in a washing machine without losing its colour, but Mr McLean said that it could not stand up to an abrasive surface.

He added: "It's not supposed to be as easy as this to get the ink out, and it's like it just simply isn't immersed into the fabric of the note like the ink on a cotton paper note.

"There's something wrong with this, and makes me wonder about the £10 note that coming out soon. I find it hard to believe that all the stress tests the £5 note was subjected to didn't pick up that it is as easy as this to remove the ink."

A spokesman for De La Rue said that notes would not normally lose their ink, and insisted that Mr McLean's had been subjected to "excessive and abnormal ink wear."

He added: "Whilst ink wear is the ultimate failure mode of polymer banknotes in circulation, the ink wear displayed here appears to us to have been achieved by a method not representative of what happens to a banknote under normal circulation conditions."

To read the complete article, see:
Plastic £5 banknote 'can be rubbed out', says printer (www.heraldscotland.com/news/14828549.Plastic___5_banknote
___39_can_be_rubbed_out__39___says_printer/?ref=rss#)

For more information on the Clydesdale Bank issue, see:
Britain's first plastic banknotes enter circulation as Clydesdale Bank issues new fivers - ahead of Bank of England launch in 2016 (www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-3007780/Clydesdale-Bank-issues-Britain-s-plastic-banknotes.html)

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