January 13, 2016

A different kind of plastic money

Yes, there's a hologram.
Counterfeiting in Canada was down in 2015.  Way down.  Here's why;
Canada's plastic money is stumping counterfeiters. The RCMP estimate the number of fake bills passed on to retailers in 2015 dropped by 74 per cent compared with the previous year.

That doesn't mean people have given up trying to copy Canada's banknotes — it's just that even their best attempts to make fake cash are falling well short.

Regina Police Const. Scott Wolfe hasn't seen much counterfeit currency since the Bank of Canada introduced polymer money four years ago, but he did have a case last fall.

"When we first touched the bill you could tell it wasn't the polymer feel. It was paper. We could see they had cut out the security window from a real $5 bill and pasted it to a $50 and $100 bill," said Wolfe.

The face in the hologram didn't match the face on the bill and the edges were uneven. Even so, the money was successfully passed on to retailers, perhaps in a dimly lit bar or sandwiched between two authentic notes.
I'm not sure if the same possibilities exist with American currency.  It's maddening enough that the $10 bill is going to be changed.  American money is institutional.  Even in Canada when I imagine money, I imagine American currency.  It's iconic.  Changing it is heresy.  Worse - it's idiotic, hyperbolic political correctness.  I'm not suggesting women should not be represented on currency, just not on existing currency. Having plastic money to prevent counterfeiting is preferable to change for the sake diversity for diversity's sake.

2 comments:

  1. Plastic money?? No more paper bills breaking in your wallets because they're frozen, eh?

    ReplyDelete
  2. A frozen tundra joke. Really? That didn't take long. LOL. So far winter here has been pretty mild.

    Actually Mike, it's some sort of mylar (?) and it has confounded counterfeiters so far. That's the good news. And it's less expensive than using a credit card (the other plastic 'money').

    On the other hand, the value of our dollar has tanked with the fall in oil prices. Pretty soon Monopoly money might be looking good to us.

    ReplyDelete

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