BRITAIN'S SWITCH TO POLYMER BANKNOTES

Britain's Central Bank will remove bank notes worth 14.5 billion pounds, or nearly $18 billion, from circulation by Sept. 30, as it seeks to retire its remaining paper currency in favor of polymer bills. The transition will make Britain the world's largest economy that uses only plastic-like bank notes.

The Bank of England urged people holding paper 20- and 50-pound bills to spend or deposit them with a financial institution before they are no longer legal tender. Retail outlets will no longer accept them starting in October, but banks and the U.K. Post Office may continue to do so. Britain is one of Europe's most cashless societies, with many consumers switching to digital and card payments during the coronavirus pandemic.

Polymers, known for their flexibility, are an important ingredient in many plastics. The Bank of England said polymer notes tend to be cleaner. They are also water resistant and harder to fake because the laborious manufacturing process is likely to put off counterfeiters.

Australia, which began issuing polymer bills in 1992, was the first economy to switch from paper currency. The U.S. dollar is printed on a linen and cotton blend with red and blue fibers randomly distributed to deter counterfeiting.

Jane Austen, the celebrated writer of romantic novels, is depicted on the polymer 10-pound bills. The 20-pound polymer note bears a portrait of J.M.W. Turner, a 19th-century artist renowned for his landscape and seascape paintings. The new 50-pound bill showcases Alan Turing, a founding father of computer science and artificial intelligence who was a code breaker during World War II. The story of his life was adapted into the Oscar-winning film The Imitation Game.

The notes going out of circulation feature Adam Smith, a Scottish economist who wrote a seminal text on capitalism, and the industrialist-inventors Matthew Boulton and James Watt.

To read the complete article, see:
Britain to pull $18B in bank notes as it switches from paper to polymer (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/06/24/uk-banknotes-paper-polymer/)

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