Paying with plastic
 

Chemical Week Associates

By Andrew Wood

13.05.98

If you think the new $50 bill looks weird, get ready to put something even stranger in your wallet-a polymer bank note. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing has begun studying alternative bank note substrates that could be used for U.S. currency early in the next century. If the idea catches on, some high-tech polymers, specialty inks, and adhesives could be-literally-in the money.

Plastic money costs more to produce than traditional paper notes, but it lasts longer and is much more difficult to forge. The notes will not wrinkle or shred if left in the laundry, and they are much less likely to be rejected by vending machines. Polymer bank notes are already in use in Australia, but they could be a harder sell in the U.S., where the public is strongly resistant to any big change in money.

Among the contenders to supply polymer bank note technology is Securency, which markets the process used to make Australia's plastic money. Securency, a joint venture of the Reserve Bank of Australia and UCB (Brussels), produces notes using an oriented polypropylene (OPP) substrate. Australia is already supplying notes to Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, Kuwait, Samoa, Singapore, Brunei, Sri Lanka, and Thailand.

"Polymer notes are a great success story," says John K. Colditz, who heads the note issue department at the Reserve Bank "We've experienced a quadrupling of the average life of our low-denomination notes." In addition, Colditz says, the technology provides higher security-in particular, a clear plastic window can incorporate features that are impossible to duplicate with paper.

The other major contender with a polymer technology is DuraNote (Macedon, NY), a jv of Mobil Films and Agra Technologies (Mississauga, ON). DuraNote also uses OPP but employs a 21-layer laminate that it says enables security devices to be placed in more than one location within the polymer and adhesive layers. It also says the note has feel and folding qualities that closely match those of paper.

"The key to our technology is that we can embed security features inside the note," says Gordon L. Benoit, new business development manager/innovation at Mobil Films and technical director at DuraNote. "It's also resistant to soiling and loss of stiffness, and it has very high ink adhesion." While the technology is more costly than paper, Benoit says its long life can reduce overall bank note costs by 60%-70%.

But paper is not being forgotten. Domtar (Montreal) is offering its Luminus technology, a paper-plastic composite, that uses a polyester film sandwiched between sheets of lightweight paper. Domtar says the technology could combine many of the benefits of plastic, including more security devices and increased toughness, while retaining the feel and processing characteristics of paper.

"With this technology, you're getting the best of both worlds," says Nancy Butchart, marketing manager at Domtar. "The note itself looks and feels like a paper bank note, but it's extremely difficult to counterfeit." While this technology is also slightly more expensive than paper, Butchart says its cost is very close that of paper bank notes, which include a watermark and security thread.

Still, no decision is expected any time soon, according to Treasury "We're really just at the information-gathering and early-testing stage," says Larry Felix, chief of external relations for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. "We're still a very long way from making a decision on this. But anyone with any potential bank note substrate is more than welcome to submit it to us for testing."