Polymer banknotes World catalog

The polymer of modern banknotes is, in essence, a film of biaxially oriented polypropylene. It prints like paper, but it can carry a clear window and stands up better to water, dirt, and wear. It was invented against counterfeiting, not for collectors. After Australia’s decimal changeover in 1966, the Reserve Bank of Australia asked CSIRO for a substrate that could not be photocopied or faked with the papers of the day.

The first circulating plastics were not that polymer. In the 1980s the American Bank Note Company printed Tyvek trials — a non-woven polyethylene — for Haiti, Costa Rica, and the Isle of Man. The stock wrinkled, the inks lifted, and the experiment did not spread. The technical leap came in January 1988, when Australia issued a $10 note for the Bicentenary: the world’s first polymer banknote, with an optically variable device of James Cook in a clear window, the fruit of two decades of work between the Bank and CSIRO.

Between 1992 and 1996 Australia replaced its entire decimal series with polymer: the first country to leave paper in ordinary circulation. In 1996 the Bank and UCB Films formed Securency to sell the Guardian substrate. De La Rue later answered with Safeguard. Other issuers chose hybrids — cotton with plastic windows. Since then dozens of central banks have taken up one system or the other, some for a whole series and others only for commemoratives.

This case is not a census of every polymer note in the world. It gathers only the countries whose polymer pieces are documented in the collection. China opens the row — the People’s Bank has not moved ordinary circulation onto plastic; its polymer notes are commemoratives — then Malaysia, where Bank Negara Malaysia moved the everyday RM5 onto polymer in 2012, England, where the Bank of England moved the everyday £5 onto polymer in 2016, and Canada, where the Bank of Canada completed the Frontiers series with the Laurier $5 in 2013.