The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has announced that a new $10HKD note, made of a thermoplastic polymer called polypropylene, will be released for a 2 year trial period. Banknotes made of polymer are longer lasting and have the ability to incorporate advanced security features that paper banknotes can’t, such as transparency.
Hong Kong isn’t the first to use polymer bank notes, however. Other countries with these colorful notes in circulation, according to Wikipedia, include Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Brunei, Chile, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Nepal, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Papua New Guinea, Romania, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam, Western Samoa and Zambia, with the first being Costa Rica in 1983.
I’m jealous. Why isn’t the U.S. more adventurous when it comes to printing money? We’ve got a lot of it, might as well make it colorful and harder to counterfeit.
[via growabrain]