Get Ready For 'Funny Money'
The first of America's greenbacks to be colorized - the $20 note sporting splashes of peach, blue and yellow - could be in your wallet later this week.
About 915 million of the new twenties have been printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, maker of the nation's paper currency, and are now available to banks.
"It's just a matter of how long they decide to take to put them in the tellers' drawers and the ATM machines," James Brent of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing told CBS News Correspondent Dan Raviv Thursday.
The $20 bill is the most-counterfeited note in the United States.
"The colors were added to add complexity to the note," said Brent, BEP's director of currency production. "Obviously, this makes it harder for tech-savvy counterfeiters to reproduce."
In May, the government took the wrappers off the revamped $20 design. The new $20 is the same size and still features the image of Andrew Jackson, the seventh president, on the front and the White House on the back.
But along with the traditional green and black colors, the new notes also include faint touches of peach and blue in certain spots on the bills. Tiny number 20s are printed on the back of the notes in yellow.
Besides color, the new notes include new features aimed making the bills harder to knock off. For instance, there's a faint blue eagle in the background on the front of the bill to the left of Jackson's image and a metallic green eagle and shield to the right of Old Hickory.
Some old anti-counterfeiting features included in the bill's last redesign, in 1998, were kept, including watermarks.
In the 2004 fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, the bureau expects to print 2.7 billion of the new twenties, bureau officials said.
Old $20 bills will continue to be accepted and re-circulated until they wear out. The $20 bill has a life of about 2 years.
New, more colorful $50 and $100 bills - the latter the most counterfeited note outside the country - are expected in 2004 and 2005, respectively. Colors for the new bills have not been announced but will vary by denomination.
One ceremony launching the new currency was held at U.S. Postal Service headquarters in Washington Thursday. Another was held at the Nashville home of President Andrew Jackson, whose face graces the note's front. Among those participating in that ceremony at The Hermitage was Andrew Jackson VI, the great-great-great grandson of the nation's seventh president.
The government is also launching a huge public education program to get the word out about updated security features in the new 2004 currency. A "New Color of Money" billboard debuts in New York's Times Square. And the government is handing out training materials to businesses where employees handle cash.