Continuing on from my previous article, ‘Money as history and nostalgia’ (businessline, August 24, 2024), that shed a new light on banknotes as time keepers playing a key role in documenting history and culture, it’s time to get down to brass-tacks, “How much money does it cost to produce money?” After all, banknotes like most other objects in our everyday lives are products that need to be produced.

For this question to be answered, the banknote must be broken down into all of its elements as per the production process. The actual substrate, the various processes including print technologies and the most important or rather, the defining cost variable, the security features. Central banks or issuing authorities would like to produce the most secure banknotes but each feature comes at a cost and like all design practitioners from around the world, as myself, the fine art of balancing beautiful aesthetics with budget constraints is always an unkind challenge.

Of course, the banknote is a bit different. It is a product that cannot afford counterfeiting under any circumstance. However, it must be noted that if it wasn’t for the ingenuity of counterfeiters, the world would have been denied of seeing some of the most incredible, mind-boggling and complex designs that adorn modern currency canvases.

Arsenal of features

Presently, there is a whole arsenal of features like watermarked paper, serial numbers, barcodes, QR codes, anti-copying features, security threads, guilloche patterns, micro prints, see-through registers, holographic windows, metallic, UV, thermal and colour shifting special inks and more. The list is fairly large.

The various combinations of these processes are applied and decisions are made keeping the cost-benefit analyses in mind especially across the different denominations. Logically, the notes of lower denomination cannot afford the high-end security and are also thankfully less attractive to the counterfeiters. And the higher denomination notes have more options available as they can afford it; thereby keeping the world of genuine banknotes in check.

One of the oldest and still very successful features is the watermark in the paper substrate. Watermarks have adorned banknotes since 1697, starting off as general lines and waves across the entire sheet to specific areas in detailed images with perfect registration within the banknote. What started as one of the initial anti-counterfeiting measures has not only survived for over 325 years now but has been constantly upgraded and improved with time and technology.

A latent image or pattern that is visible when held up in the light, created by the varying thicknesses and densities of the pulp in the manufacturing process is what accounts for a watermark. An alternative to it on the more recent polymer substrate is the clear window brilliantly invented and beautifully embellished across the water-resistant modern medium. The exact opposite with no layers but clear and pure transparency, a sign of the authentic and inimitable substrate.

Although there have been great technological advances in the printing industry, the banknote still relies on traditional silk screen, letterpress, offset, intaglio printing with special inks and application of foils, holograms and their next-gen, a diffractive optically variable image device, the kinegram. A combination of the processes contributes towards a banknote that’s attractive to the eye as well as easy to touch and feel by hand deeming it to be instantly recognisable and easily authenticated.

Perfect cocktail

Guilloche patterns, microprints, detailed engravings all contribute to the main image and the background of the banknote artwork. The choices of what goes on money is a whole different story but the underlying premise is always on trust and the imagery emanates it. The banknote’s design mixes, weaves and blends a perfect cocktail of art (form) and security (function).

However, the signature feature to my mind is the serial number. It confers the mathematical property of uniqueness as defined to be ‘one and only one’ to each and every single banknote across denominations and series. This feature offers the issuing authorities to keep the most watertight control on forgeries and fakes. What started off as an accounting method has metamorphosised into the simplest yet most powerful security system. Today’s serial numbers are rather complicated alphanumerical combinations that give insights into the year of issue, special commemorations, local printing presses within the region of issue and more. They are also reproduced in special inks as well as designed with unique characters in different sizing and spacing to make copying much harder. Without the serial number, the banknote would not only lose its individuality but also its validity.

Eventually, it does come down to the economics of printing money that determines the viabilities and permutations of the available features. A myriad of which and their combinations are used on present day banknotes from around the world depending on the choices by issuing authorities and central banks when they find answers to “How much money does it cost to produce money?”

The writer, proprietor of Money Talks, is an independent scholar researching the art, design and symbolism of banknote imagery from around the world

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