New Currency - Plastic Dollar Bills for Canucks!
 

Looks like we are going to get dollar bills back, but they will be made out of plastic. I can't wait to see what they look like, will they be the same as the old bills? Will the $2 bill get re-introduced? I know the reasoning for replacing the bills with the Loonie and the Toonie, but i never have liked the load that these heavy coins put on my pockets.


Canadian currency to go plastic next year - thestar.com


Canadian currency to go plastic next year


Jennifer Yang
Staff Reporter
Paying with plastic will take on a whole different meaning next year as the Bank of Canada begins introducing plastic dollar bills.

The federal government announced in its budget yesterday that it is “taking steps to modernize Canada’s currency and protect against counterfeiting,” introducing a new currency printed on a polymer material.

Plastic bills have proven to be more durable than the current cotton-based money, reportedly lasting four times as long.

Polymer money has other benefits too: it is cleaner, cheaper to produce and harder to counterfeit than cotton-based paper bills.

The bills are also more green — because the money lasts longer, it will cause a lower impact on the environment, the federal government contends.

The plastic banknote was first introduced in Australia and several countries have since adopted the polymer money, including New Zealand, Mexico and Vietnam.

According to the federal budget, Canada’s loonies and toonies will also be undergoing a transformation in 2011, with a new composition that uses the Royal Canadian Mint’s cheaper “patented multi-ply plated steel technology.”

I kinda like that idea. (chalk another one up for the Canadians) Clearly, it would be substantialy more durable than paper. I wonder, though, how easily it can be folded into a wallet or billfold.

I immediately thought of the monopoly money that came with my millenium (2000) edition. it was soft, pliable, foldable, yet it is obviously a plastic of some sort. It would be very easy to put into wallets.

Oh no...again with the Monopoly money comparisons to our currency!

I'm all for it. Can they bring back the animals on the back?? that was great.

great to see our distant cousins finally waking up. we've (us Aussies) had plastic money for a good 15 years at least as far as i can remember..maybe more now.

its extremely difficult to tear, much cleaner, stands the strains of the washing machine if you are ever that unfortunate and generally a better product. probably cheaper to make over the life of the product too.

http://www.thirteenmonths.com/images...A/au_money.jpg

I would rather see the bills get replaced by coins. Coins last longer and the mint could basically shut down every other year because the money wouldn't wear out and need replaced.

I would also like to see the government come out with digital money that doesn't have the transaction fees. They could do this for on-line commerce pretty easily, but they would be in competition with PayPal & Visa now.

LOL when I read the thread title I pictured money that was made from the same material as a credit card, making it rigid and hard...I was all "whats wrong with those crazy Canadians!" :D

Anyway I can't see what would be so bad about using a more durable material to make money, as long as its cost effective, and easy to carry around it seems like a pretty good idea.

do you have $1 & $2 dollar bills as well, or coins for those denominations? We used to have bills for that, but when the $1 coin came out over 20 years ago, followed by the $2 coin, we were told it was more economical. But it is a real pain to have that many coins in your pockets.

I would guess it folds just like regular money. Polymers are amazing things!

How about no, having experienced the Loonie and Toonie since they came out, that's enough coinage for me, maybe coins would be great for a woman they have purses to put them in, they generally get thrown in a guys pocket, and having $30 in Loonies and Toonies is a pain in the ass.

They tried the dollar coin here in the states (I don't remember if it was ever intended to replace the dollar bill) about 10 years ago and it was wildly unpopular, nobody wanted to walk around with 5 pounds of coins in their pockets. I like the concept of issuing coins for smaller dollar amounts but once in practice I find it very annoying.

i sort of liked the dollar coin. i was in school at the time and it made buying things like sodas and chips go a lot quicker.

i could see how it would be a pain in the ass after they accumulated though. my wallet is full of singles. i would hate to imagine all of them being coins.

I like the paper money, being a conspiracist, I like the idea of being able to tear the little strip out of the paper money. (NOT that I have ever or would ever deface money like that). Plastic won't allow that luxury I'm sure and thus they (whoever "they" are) will be able to track you through your money and know how much you have on you. Just a matter of time before thieves get that technology and will know who to pick pocket and rob.

We have plastic notes here and they work well.

The $2, $5, $10 are all plastic but I think the $50 and up are still paper. There is no $20 note and the $1 is a coin. There are no pennies either.

At first I was resistant to the idea. I like coins to separate what I call "pocket change" (coins) from "money for a specific purpose" (foldin' money).

But going back to a $1 and $2 will give me an ego boost: they will make me feel like a hundredaire.

pan, those strips of paper are no more than that... strips of paper. snopes.com: Strip in U.S. Banknote

As for the US dollar coins, those have been around more often than not and are still around. Of course, the fact that people talk about US dollar coins as if they don't exist shows just how much effort is being put into promoting them. What they did about 10 years ago was reintroduce the dollar coin after a redesign from a silver Susan B. Anthony coin to a golden Sacagawea coin. Starting in 2007, they began a program to mint golden coins with the presidents, the same way they minted all the states on the quarter.

I'm a big fan of the dollar coin and sometimes go out of my way to get them and spend them. If it's cheaper to make dollar coins than dollar bills, then the government should stop being indecisive about it and just discontinue the dollar bill. People will get over it. People don't like change, and if they're given the option they're going to stick with what they know, regardless of what is better.

Anyway, this thread is about plastic bills. Sounds like a great idea to me. Especially if it's cheaper, I fail to see the down side.

I like coins just because they're more interesting that bills, but I don't know that I would want to carry tons of coins around. I could get behind plastic currency in the US. Anything to make the bills more durable and save a little money at the mint.

They do fold easily, but trying to flatten them again is not really as simple, especially after they've been folded in your wallet for a while. Not my problem, if it is out of the wallet, I'm spending it so flattening it isn't my problem.

To answer Leto's question. We replaced $1 and $2 with coins about the same time the plastic money came in (15 years or more ago). With inflation, they *are* pocket change anyway. My daily train ticket costs (7 stations and return) costs more than $7 (AU). They days of giving yourself sugar poisoning with 20c worth of lollies are long gone.

Here's betting that the US is still using paper money and $1 bills well into the next century.

Whats really weird about this conversation nobodies brought up the growing trend of just using cards....I don't think I've had money in my pocket in the better part of 2 years now, cept maybe for trips to the strip clubs (on a completely unrelated topic I was at a place recently where you put your card in a machine and get fake money back to give the strippers...truth be told the whole thing just felt wrong and dirty). At this point I don't think I'd really care if they decided to make all money out of 3 ton stones because I never seem to use it.

Anybody else here that never seems to have cash on them anymore? If so do you think the trend of paying with plastic will become so predominant that the use of cash will almost completely disappear from most places?

Here in Australia we have a $1 & $2 Coin, they were made into coins in the 1980s (?)

The plastic notes were developed by CSIRO in the 1980s & introduced in the late '80s.

They are easy to fold, personally I quite like them and after having used them for over 20 years I guess I'm more used to them than paper money.

Cheers,
OMS

Having seen some outside of the bills... they are an opaque plastic strip with the value written on them.

When they first came out in the 90's, they were very easy to tear out. Now, they are woven into the bills and stretch most of the time breaking if you try to pull them out.

Snopes is very wrong on these. I do not recommend breaking the law (defacing money) by trying to do it, but should you come across some strips innocently like I have from others who may have found them pulled out, you'll see what I'm talking about.

When held up to a blacklight each denomination gives off a different color.

The presidential coins are pretty cool.

I agree. Of course 30+ years ago, there was not going to be money by now, it was all going to be on a card.

pan, how is snopes wrong? If you are capable of holding the bill up to a blacklight then you have the bill in front of you, in which case you can see the denomination anyway. The paper serves the purpose of making counterfeiting more difficult, and only that purpose. The changes that have been made are merely to make it even more difficult to counterfeit. Being more difficult to take out means it's... more difficult to take out. Nothing more. Nonetheless, I've taken it out before, I know what it looks like, and it's nothing special. It doesn't have any secretive properties that allows anyone to track you or see how much money you have through your clothes.

I don't really mind the dollar coin so much. After more than twenty years, I've gotten used to the loonie (so called, because there's a picture of a loon on one side, the Queen is on the other). I thought adding the $2 coin was a bit over-kill. We call that the toonie - a play on the loonie nick name, and the number two. Combined with the loonie, I just have too many coins in the pocket. I now tend to use my credit card for all purchases. I don't use debit because my banking package allows only 10 tx per month for free and my credit card gives me points towards grocery shopping anyway.

What I would love to come across and use are 50 cent pieces. I haven't seen these in circulation for a long time.

Agreed; in fact, we just redesigned the back of the penny. So, we won't be getting rid of that one soon either.

It is a very simple piece of opaque plastic .... but your shooting holes in my paranoia...

You took one out... shhhhh, they'll get ya.

I always change $40 or so into dollar coins to carry in a little leather pouch whenever I go to the Renaissance Fair. Turkey legs taste better when they're paid for with pieces of gold and silver out of a leather pouch tied to your belt!

Plastic money is the future, just like plastic everything else. I'm assuming it's made of Tyvek or simlar, the polymer that the USPS priority mail envelopes is made out of...Tyvek is awesome stuff.

Nerd.

According to wikipedia, Australian currency is made out of polypropylene. Also, apparently 7 countries have switched over to polymer bank notes, presumably making Canada the eighth.

The extra change doesn't bother me, but I'm trying to avoid using plastic since there's been a rash of card fraud issues in southern Ontario lately. It's centered around the Windsor area, but I'm still using one of the old bank cards without the chip, so I figure I ought to be careful just the same.

In Japan we have paper and coins. The coins are roughly equal to .01, .05., .10, .50, 1.00, and 5.00 in US$. The bills start at $10, $20 (though we rarely see these, like the US $2), $50, $100. The ATMs here usually give in increments of 10,000 yen ($100) because this is a very cash based culture. It's not uncommon to walk around with 30,000 yen or more in your wallet, plus 1,000-2,000 yen in coin. I would love for Japan to go to plastic bills. Even though the initial investment in the tech to make them is rather high, they last a hell of a lot longer than paper, which saves money over time. My tax yen at work!

aussies have plastic notes AND metal coins,

we dont use the 1 & 2 cents coins anymore. they went out about the same time the plastic notes came in.

http://z.about.com/d/coins/1/0/u/1/-...oney_coins.jpg

I've always wondered why the number of Yen is so high. Can you actually buy something for a yen? why not divide everything by 100, or is there a traditional/cultural aspect that I'm missing?

---------- Post added at 09:31 AM ---------- Previous post was at 09:02 AM ----------

that's very cool dlish, so I went to find a similar pictorial of our coins.

http://i639.photobucket.com/albums/u...oney-coins.jpg

notes:

- the penny is still used often, mostly because nothing costs just even amounts of money. But they are especially effective as filler for jars and dresser top wicker containers.

- our symbology is:
the penny has a maple leaf (of course)
the nickle has a beaver (of course, I mean, how cliche can you get?)
the dime has a schooner on it (some say represents the famous Bluenose)
the quarter has an elk (not Anne Elk, but an elk)
the half dollar (50 cent piece) has the Canadian coat of arms on it, and I have never seen it used in circulation
the dollar shows a loon (aka & therefore "the loonie")
the 2 dollar coin, looks a lot like a bigger version of the Euro and has a polar bear on it. Again a cliche. The nick name for this is "toonie" as a rip on the loonie. I think I've seen it referenced somewhere in the forum as a "bear-assed Queen" because there is a bear on the backside, with the Queen being on the front. (hahaha). when these coins first came out, lots of folks took pleasure in trying to pop the middle out, until they came to the realization that it rendered their $2 worthless. Yes, we learn quick up in the Great White North!

I see that we have the same Queen depictions, I suppose these are 'official' releases from the Palace. I would like to know more about the reverse symbology on the Aussie coins tho, Is that Darwin on the $2 coin?

Tis called inflation. Fucking pain in the ass for third world countries. Economic can of worms I'd rather not open up here.

Plastic to me seems far more durable in many forms including counterfeit prevention. This is a good idea and I think everyone should embrace it.

in Japan? is Japan considered 3rd world? It seems that it's been like that there for decades.

i dare say that the cotton suppliers will be pissed off with you if you tried to change all cotton money to plastic. it'd take away from their livelyhood. how much of a fight they'd put is a different question.

i guess they'd have to come up with some ways of providing better value for money (excuse the pun) and a better product that'd rival plastics' current advantages . maybe with additional security features or maybe drop their profit markups to keep their market share.

Nah, the cotton industry will just put more money into lobbying and campaign donations ;)

It's sad when that is the truth.

I still like all metal money to save money in the long run on printing costs & long term durability. They could make it pretty light if they used different types of metal. Digital money would be the best, but there are too many people who don't trust the government or banks for that to happen.

So many people complaining about government spending, yet they don't want to do everything possible...

Leto, regarding your need for the penny because the price of things is never even, that is also the case here. We don't use the penny here anymore and all that happens is things get rounded up or down to the nearest nickel (usually down).

1c -possum
2c - frill necked lizard
5c - echidna
10c - lyrebird
20c - platypus
50c - coat of arms (kangaroo and emu)
$1 - more kangaroos
$2 - an indigenous gentleman

The queen picture has been recently updated - all older coins have a young lizzy, but this was replaced in the last few years with an older lizzy.

Both the 50c and $1 have a selection of different 'fronts' (assuming the queen is on the back...), though the shape and size remains the same.

No, Japan is an industrialized country. Newly, I should add.

By inflation in third world countries I meant various countries in Africa. Take Zimbabwe for instance. The money there is a ... joke.

---------- Post added at 10:52 AM ---------- Previous post was at 10:49 AM ----------

I agree that they would cause a lot of noise but the downside of the matter is, with cotton, durability suffers. This translates to it being more expensive (more so than plastic) to produce in the long run. Cotton procurement isn't as easy (relatively, given the high amount of plastic products) as plastic is. Plastic is recyclable at a higher scale.

Plastic just makes more sense.

not unless like smeth said - they lobby a politician. then they're back in business