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Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

Polymer banknotes were introduced in '88 by Australia, who switched completely to polymer in '96. Other (ex-)commonwealth nations have followed suit, so it's not that surprising Britain is switching as well.

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Some Scottish banks already issue polymer-based notes.

With a plan to introduce more denominations in the near term [1] [2]

[1] http://www.rbs.com/news/2016/april/new-p5-and-p10-polymer-no...

[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-3537...

The question is will they be using the same Australian printer as many of the other countries that have switched to polymer notes. Seems like a big single point failure node at this point.

Britain (and many other countries) use De La Rue - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_La_Rue - for printing currency. They claim to have over 70 polymer designs and 60 million notes. http://www.delarue.com/markets/central-banks-currency/polyme...

I think the Eurozone uses a different polymer printer than Australia, so the UK might just use the same as the rest of the EU.

The euro is printed on paper.

Romania is the only European country to use polymer notes.

Not anymore, at all.

For 2 years now it’s been on polymer: https://www.ecb.europa.eu/euro/banknotes/europa/html/index.e...

That's really interesting, I didn't know that. Does anyone know what the timescale is for phasing out paper? I seen that the website mentions parallel issuance for a period - in the last year I've visited Munich and Paris and only come across paper.

I'm genuinely interested to see how the logistics of rolling out a new material will work across such a large area with so many countries and banks involved

5€ bills were replaced several years ago, 10€ bills over the course of last year, and now 20€ bills were replaced already.

The old 10€ bills stopped showing up in the change I got from stores by end of 2015, and around march 2016 the old 20€ bills stopped showing up.

Obviously, they’re still in use in several places.

And regarding the rollout: Most banks have had to accept dozens of possible payment methods, for them one more type of bills is not an issue. Producing the money is more of an issue, but the link I mentioned before has an article about that, too.

These new notes are paper. It says so on (1).

I don't live in the Eurozone, but I have a new and old €20, and the paper is the same. I have an old €50, and a new €5, and the paper is the same.

Polymer notes almost always have transparent windows, and they feel like plastic, not paper.

(1) http://www.new-euro-banknotes.eu/Euro-Banknotes/PRODUCTION

The €20 note has a transparent window, and feels like plastic.

Are you sure you have actually gotten one of the new €20 notes?

Do you have one? The window is only in the security strip, and it's clear on the reverse where the window has been cut out from the paper. The plastic is applied somehow to one side of the note.

Polymer notes like those I've used from New Zealand and Vietnam have the whole thing made from plastic, and no paper at all. Example: http://banknote.ws/COLLECTION/countries/ASI/VIE/VIE0124.htm

See, for example, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-euro-fakes-idUSBREA0C0JQ20... I can find no mention anywhere of polymer Euros.

As far as I know they’re a cotton-nylon base with plastic coating on top, in contrast to the previous cotton-paper base without coating.

That counts as plastic money, IMO.

A documentary I saw said that the polymer is really special and hard to produce, so probably the method is patented.

Canada also uses polymer notes now

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