A New Face On The Twenty

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

September 24, 1998 / 10:27 AM EDT / CBS

The $20 bills are getting a makeover.

With 12 billion of these notes already in circulation, it is the second-most popular bill. It also has the dubious distinction of being the most counterfeited bill. To make it harder to copy the twenty, some changes are now in place, as they begin to circulate Thursday.

Angela Veselov is a currency specialist with the Federal Reserve of New York. She outlined the changes in an interview with CBS 'This Morning' Co-Anchor Mark McEwen:

Andrew Jackson's portrait is 30 percent larger, and more detail has been incorporated into the portrait, making it more difficult to replicate.
It is also moved slightly off-center, creating room for a watermark, which is actually a transparent image of Andrew Jackson on the right side of the note. It's located within the paper; if you hold it up to the light, you can see it from the front and from the back.
There is a security strip in the bill, a polymer thread embedded in the paper which under ultraviolet light will glow green.
Color-shifting ink is used. The number in the lower right corner on the front of the note looks green when viewed straight ahead, but appears black when viewed at an angle.

Veselov says that on the $50 note, the security strip is in a different location, and it glows yellow. On the $100 note, it glows red.

You can still use the old $20 bills. The new twenties are being distributed through the banks, some of which may put the new bills in their automatic teller machines right away.