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This is why I like polymer money. I have yet to hear of any fake plastic notes out there. One documentary said that buying that special plastic film is harder than getting military explosives.

I did hear about people passing paper printed fake notes instead of polymer ones, but you have to be at a whole new level of carelessness to be fooled by this one.

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I've recently heard of fake "new" £10 notes in UK.

Example news story (I heard of it from a trusted acquaintance in a different region) - https://www.leicestermercury.co.uk/news/leicester-news/forge...

The polymer notes were invented as a response to fake bank notes (Australian $10 notes in fact).

Here’s an article on it http://theconversation.com/proceeds-of-crime-how-polymer-ban...

We have it in Romania too and it's great, very hard to tear and also waterproof.

Traditional cotton notes are waterproof and I've never torn one (but you could swap it at a bank if you did).

When I was a teen-ager, I had a bad habit of running into the ocean on a whim. Invariably, I had my wallet on me. I was always amazed that the banknotes never seemed affected, even though I knew they were made of cotton.

A dip in the ocean is much less harsh than the much more common environment of money left in a pants pocket when they go in a washer and dryer.

You had your wallet on you where? Presumably not in your hand, but in your pants. Your pants weren't affected much, either, even if they were also made of cotton. Why would you expect the banknotes to be different?

It was the 70's. So the pants were probably polyester! Ha!

'legacy' banknotes are mostly made from cotton, not wood pulp which gives them the strength to stay cohesive even when wet, much like your clothes in the washing machine.

How about bleaching low-value notes, and printing high-value designs on top of them?

In the UK, bank notes are different sizes depending on their value. So that goes a long way towards stopping that kind of thing.

Isn't it true that if a banknote is torn in two, you can go to the bank and have it replaced?

That's true in America too. (You have to have both halves in your possession, of course).

Anecdotally, you can do so without both halves, as long as the piece you have is clearly the majority of the bill.

I don't know either the relevant law or common institutional policies regarding that, though.

Banks might accept such more-than-half bills as a courtesy to their customers but ultimately it's the US Treasury that will take them and redeem them. If you have a bunch of partially destroyed notes, you should go to them.

http://bep.gov/services/currencyredemption.html

https://www.npr.org/2017/07/07/535920428/the-office-where-mu...

that's nowhere near as scaleable as "regular" notes that you can spend at any store without question.

I've seen people accept notes held together with scotch tape.

In China it's quite common to handle very grimy and nearly destroyed notes that are 10 RMB and under.

About ten years ago, when I was working at Loomis, we accepted damaged banknotes as long as you had two thirds of the banknote.

Physical size scales with banknote denomination (not linearly :P of course).

Within one currency. Presumably, the trick would be to take Australian $5, bleach, cut a few mm off one edge, and reprint to £5 notes.

£2.16 profit!

Don't they have clear windows?

new australian bank notes have an entire large vertical wavy transparent stripe with a hologram on top. one would assume VERY hard to change anything about it

$50 - https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2018/02/say-gday-to-australias...

also, all the transparencies are shaped differently

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