All change
Tout sur la nouvelle pièce d’une livre sterling.
Au Royaume-Uni, une nouvelle pièce d'une livre a fait son apparition dans les porte-monnaie le mois dernier. S’il vous reste d’anciennes pièces, vous avez jusqu’au 15 octobre prochain pour les dépenser ! Leurs remplaçantes ne sont plus rondes, mais adoptent une forme à douze côtés, elles sont également plus fines, moins lourdes et légèrement plus grandes que les précédentes. Elles sont surtout beaucoup plus difficile à imiter…
Best known for his musings on gravity, Isaac Newton also spent several years as warden of the Royal Mint, charged with upholding the integrity of the nation’s coinage. He performed the role with great— some might say excessive—enthusiasm: he is said to have bribed and leant on William Chaloner’s associates and mistresses to secure the conviction of the counterfeiting kingpin. The mint of today eschews such tactics, but takes currency security no less seriously.
2. A new £1 coin appeared in shops and banks on March 28th. An initial batch of 1.5bn has been shipped from a production site in Llantrisant, Wales, and consumers will have
until October to spend or exchange their old coins. The makeover is deemed necessary because the version in pockets today, introduced in 1983, is no longer fit for purpose. As counterfeiters have got better at producing copies, the number of fakes has grown to one in 30 coins in circulation, the mint reckons.
3.The new coin’s first lines of defence are its bimetallic composition (a gold-coloured nickel-brass outer ring and silver-coloured nickelplated-alloy middle), its 12-sided edge, evoking the threepenny bit, and tiny lettering cut into the inside rim. It also boasts a hologram-like “latent image” that changes from a pound symbol to a “1” when the coin is tilted.
4.Then there is what the mint calls “covert” security: a layer embedded in the coin which
is understood to respond to signals of different frequencies. Authenticity can be verified by scanners at banks and in vending machines. To take advantage of this new feature, Britain’s half a million or so vending machines are being refitted with electromagnetic-signature detectors. Supermarkets have been replacing coin slots in trolleys.
5. Adam Lawrence, the mint’s chief executive, claims the new coin is the most secure ever. With all the talk of cash becoming ever more digital, some might wonder whether it is worth investing so much time and money in making physical coins harder to copy and more durable. They should take a look at the statistics, says Mr Lawrence: both the value and volume of the notes and coins that are circulating in Britain is still going up each year.