Protecting Money
The volume of banknotes in circulation is rapidly growing worldwide despite the recent advance of internet banking, cyber money and credit cards. While counterfeiting is growing, it seams to be more manageable than computer crime. It is easier to protect banknotes against forgery than to protect “electronic” money against the attacks of sophisticated hackers.
Currency printing became a booming business across the globe in the late 1980s fueled by major political changes in the world, mostly in Europe and Asia. At first it was the collapse of Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union, followed by political changes in the Eastern communist block. New countries were created, with some of them lacking statesmanship experience. As a result, for the last 15 years, over 40 new currencies were created or re-created, greatly exceeding a similar process in the 1960s when the former British, French and Portuguese colonies gained independence.
The first banknotes were made by the Chinese around 650 AD. In Europe, the industrial fabrication of paper banknotes began in the 17th century in Sweden. Today nearly 90 billion banknotes are being printed annually worldwide. About half are made for internal consumption by a small group of countries – the United States, Russia, China and India. 20% are printed by several prominent countries including Brazil, Switzerland, Japan, Sweden, and South Korea for their own monetary systems. 10% of the market is collectively produced by the countries of the European Union (printing the Euro). The remaining 20% (17-19 billion banknotes) are left to about 10 major companies (some of them private) located mostly in developed countries and dominating the world of commercial currency printing. The largest banknote printer in the world, De La Rue (United Kingdom), supplies paper currency for 70 countries. Giesecke & Devrient from Germany, the number 2 company, produces money for 30 countries and Goznak (Russia), who for the last 10 years has acquired the most modern equipment and technology and shares the third place with French company Fidiciaire, is the source for 15 countries. In pre-perestroika times Goznak printed money for Vietnam, North Korea, Laos, Cambodia, Afghanistan and Iraq (until 1989). However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union Goznak lost major customers in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet republics, Asia and Africa.
While the majority of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe countries rely on major Western sources like De La Rue (making currencies for Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan), Giesecke & Devrient (for Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia), Fiduciaire (for Georgia), there are three newly built banknote printing plants in the former Soviet Republics of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan that are now in operation. Orell Füssli (Switzerland), Joh Enschede (Holland), Banknote Corporation of America and Canadian Banknote are also providing high quality currency printing in this rapidly growing region.
Recently some self-proclaimed “independent” countries without world recognition such as Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh are printing their own money with quite sophisticated security features.
On the negative side of this current expansion is the fact that in the process of changing political systems and the creation of new autonomies, some specialized and highly sensitive printing means went to the wrong hands in the Eastern Europe and the Caucasus region and initiated the explosive growth of counterfeiting major world currencies – including the US Dollar and the Euro. According to confidential sources, over $10 billion extremely high quality dollar bills were printed in Chechnya when this region in the south of Russia was beyond government reach during the independence war.
Banknote printing was always a very sensitive and secretive market. Ninety percent of the production equipment for this business is supplied by the German-Swiss group KBA-GIORI providing turnkey systems with the highest level of security features. In May 2004, for the first time breaking the veil of secrecy, KBA-GIORI demonstrated the complete process of making a banknote during a 4-week open house in Le Mont (Switzerland). The presented production line was utilizing almost all the printing and converting technologies available today.
With the growing illegal use of advanced printing equipment by counterfeiters, the world’s banknote market is under constant pressure to stay ahead.
Security Features on Banknotes
Paper- Water marks
- Security threads
- Colored and fluorescent security fibers
- Flickering Stripes
- Ultraviolet sensitivity
- Intaglio technology
- Micro printing
- Coding and tone modulation
- Foil stripes and patches
- Split-color printing
- Barcode numbering
- Holograms and kinegrams (moving images)
- Optically variable ink
- Metallic and magnetic inks
- Iridescent and fluorescent inks
