Christmas and the summer season are a time when our businesses get busy and handle more cash. Here are some cash handling tips and tools to check banknotes and genuine. While the overall counterfeits trend in New Zealand is low, scammers do take advantage at this time of year.
Help your cash handling employees with these cash tips and tools from the Reserve Bank of New Zealand:
- It is easy to tell if a banknote is genuine. Use the look, feel, tilt technique video on the RBNZ website. All cash handlers should use this technique before taking and counting banknotes into the till.
- Refresh and retrain your cash handling staff. Use the interactive banknote, video, and downloadable posters and training resources.
- Make sure cash handlers check the ‘shiny bird’ (bottom left corner on the front). Genuine banknotes have a colour changing bird. Tilt the note back and forth to see a coloured bar roll up and down the bird.
- Check the shiny bird and the foil and the window.
- The Reserve Bank say they have detected newer fake $50 and $100 banknotes printed on a plastic material with a transparent window that are the same size as real banknotes. They feel stiffer than genuine banknotes but will be missing security features like the shiny bird and hologram image in the window. Sometimes, these notes have text on them like this image [below right]:
- Genuine banknotes can have ink worn off revealing the clear plastic they are printed on, particularly if they have been stored folded. Even a worn genuine banknote will still have working security features, such as the ‘shiny bird’.
- Passing fake banknotes is a crime. Police take this offending seriously. Report the incidents to Police, keep video evidence, and put any fake notes in an envelope to help preserve evidence.