Dash Of Color Added To U.S. Cash
America's paper money — the venerable greenback — is no longer going to appear all green. Bills aren't about to turn psychedelic, but they are getting a tad more colorful, part of a broader effort to thwart sophisticated counterfeiters.
First in line for the government's money makeover is the $20 bill, featuring Andrew Jackson. The $20 bill is the most-counterfeited note in the United States and the second most-commonly used bill behind the $1.
The Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which makes the nation's paper currency, debuted the new $20 in a public showing Tuesday.
The most noticeable change in the bill is that it has more color. The new $20 has a subtle green, peach and blue color featured in the now neutral-colored background.
In addition, the image of Jackson — the seventh president — appears slightly bigger and the border around his portrait from the old $20 has been removed.
The new design also includes a blue eagle in the background on the front of the bill as well as a metallic green eagle and shield.
The United States has had colorful money before, but it was a long time ago, experts said.
"The U.S. used to have big, colorful currency — some of it even described as 'rainbow notes' in the 1800s," said David Hall, president of Collectors Universe, a California company that specializes in rare coin and paper money. "The monotony of black and green started in the late 1920s when our paper money was redesigned and reduced in size."
People won't see the new $20s in cash registers or dispensed by ATM machines until after the new bills go into circulation, probably in the fall.
Around 12 to 18 months after that, a redesigned $100 bill — the most knocked-off note outside the country — and a new $50 bill will follow. The government is considering whether to change $5s and $10s. There are no plans to alter the $1, because counterfeiters don't bother with such small stuff. The same goes for the obscure $2 bill.
When the new $20 is issued, the old bills will remain in circulation and will be used until they wear out. The average life of a $20 bill is now two years, according to Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
By itself, the addition of color isn't a security feature, but its use provides the opportunity to add more features that could deter bogus bill makers, bureau officials have said.
Over the years, counterfeiters have graduated from offset printing to increasingly sophisticated color copiers, computer scanners, color ink jet printers and publishing-grade software, all readily available.
Another change for the new $20 includes more distinct color-shifting ink. In the last currency redesign, color-shifting ink that looks green when viewed straight on but black at an angle was used in a spot on some notes.
Some anti-counterfeiting features included in the last redesign will be retained, officials have said. They include watermarks that are visible when held up to light; embedded security threads that glow a color when exposed to an ultraviolet light; and very tiny images, visible with a magnifying glass, known as microprinting.
The government is working with industry to make sure the new bills can be read by ATMs and vending machines.
The $20 bill was last made over in 1998, part of a redesign of U.S. currency that that started out in 1996 with the $100 bill and ended in 2000 with new $5s and $10s.
A number of security features were added to the bills. The most noticeable change was the harder-to-copy, oversized, off-center portraits of the nation's founding fathers. That produced all kinds of derisive nicknames: funny money, Monopoly money and cartoon money.
While the new look for the founding fathers in the 1996 redesign might not have won widespread rave reviews, the security features are proving effective. "The incidence of counterfeiting of the new-design notes is dramatically lower than that of the older-design notes," the Treasury Department, Secret Service and the Federal Reserve said in a report released earlier this year.