Stop using bank notes inappropriately: BOT

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ECONOMY
Stop using bank notes inappropriately: BOT
The Nation



BANGKOK: -- Bank of Thailand urged all Thais not to mark or write anything on bank notes, to help the country save hundreds of million each year.

In its statement, the central bank said that bank notes are degraded because of the marking and writing and they will be eliminated along with worn-out or torn bank notes.

It said that each year, billions of new bank notes are printed and 80 per cent of them replace the degraded bank notes. The replacement ratio is high compared to other countries’.

A study showed that if people correctly use the bank notes - without marking or tearing, such would help save hundreds of million required for the new note printing, it said.

It also advised all who possess such bank notes to exchange for new ones at Government Savings Bank and commercial banks.

-- The Nation 2014-06-16

[Valentine]

I usually see the bank tellers writing on the notes to show how many they have in the stack so this should be the first place for this edict to be directed to.

[laurentbkk]

how strange , usually the staffs of the banks , in fact my bank , always write on the banknotes. I never did .

[neverdie]

I thought they were going to eventually roll out all lactic currency, like the new 50 baht notes. They last 4 or 5 times longer than the old paper types, they could save a bundle eventually by doing so.

Many years ago, Thais would not dare to write on bank notes. Writing on money is one thing that really annoys the crap out of me, call me old fashioned.

Edited June 16, 2014 by neverdie

[Basil B]

I have just looked through my wallet out of 15 UK bank notes one has writing on it, the figures "920" on a £20 note, obviously a cashier in a bank or shop, it is a bad practice in any country and may be good idea to fine people who do it, OK not much chance of catching many that do it but a few fined say a few thousand Baht will be a big deterrent.

[ChrisY1]

Well......the BoT is right.....even the girls at Nana don't take "dirty" notes ...

[Chicog]

That was a good old Arab Spring trick. They kept writing "Death to (Insert dictatorial leader's name here)" on all the money so the message got circulated.

[Pib]

I expect notes do wear out faster than in many other countries since cash is king in Thailand and use of credit/debit cards is still behind western countries. Plus the notes are used in a tropical environment (hot and humid) that most likely causes them to deteriorate faster.

[marcusd]

Use the Australian POLYMER technology. The one the USA will not use eventhough it is safer and less prone to tampering and fraud. The USA do not use it as they did not invent it. Spoil sports! Many ASEAN countries are using our technology saving the very thing the BOI is on about.

[trainman34014]

I have just looked through my wallet out of 15 UK bank notes one has writing on it, the figures "920" on a £20 note, obviously a cashier in a bank or shop, it is a bad practice in any country and may be good idea to fine people who do it, OK not much chance of catching many that do it but a few fined say a few thousand Baht will be a big deterrent.

A few years ago i came to Chiang Mai with 600 quid in 20 pound notes and several of them had writing on them, because the Brit banks do it all the time. Anyway twice i went to change money at booths and twice i had notes thrown back at me as 'unusable because dirty' when they had writing on them. The girl said second time 'very bad to write on Queens paper, no want'. Third time i went i gave her clean notes and she gave me back several Thai notes that were very grubby, no writing but just dirty, so i threw back the bad ones and said 'dirty, no want', very bad to make Kings paper dirty' . Obviously she wasn't out with me that evening !

[chainarong]

I never have mine long enough to see what is on them.

[englishoak]

Rubbish, its the obsession with pristine crisp notes that costs them. ive had many refusals to take a baht note thats not in tip top condition many times, the most common refusal is the 100baht. and 20 baht, traders do it even banks do it ( or try ) until you make a stand and then they will take them because they have to and usually with a sour puss face on by then.

Thailand is the only country I know where banks turn away foreign notes if the condition of them isnt pristine enough and yes there is a reason for it, cost to the banks as they are not able to pass these back into circulation, its a stingy attitude though and infuriates tourists.

Top tip for notes that are just looking tired... damp and then iron them flat.. they should look ok to get rid of easy enough.

Edited June 16, 2014 by englishoak

[FangFerang]

Use the Australian POLYMER technology. The one the USA will not use eventhough it is safer and less prone to tampering and fraud. The USA do not use it as they did not invent it. Spoil sports! Many ASEAN countries are using our technology saving the very thing the BOI is on about.

Actually the US money is made from a form of cloth that has some complex security information chemically encoded into the fabric. That's why they don't use polymer.

Plus we use intaglio printing (very high pressure printin). There are less thaan a dozen such presses in existence. One was in Syria -- it somehow went kaboom.

Printing counterfeit money is a quick way to get killed.

[tezzainoz]

Oh my God

My Thai wife always put her name on a 500 or 1000 baht note

I would not mind 100 baht for every time she has been told she gave them a lessor amount of money

when they inspect the till they find the 1000 baht note with her name on it

Thai policy,

Boss never tells off his staff for scamming a client

He is more upset he looses face by them getting caught doing it

[englishoak]

Oh my God

My Thai wife always put her name on a 500 or 1000 baht note

I would not mind 100 baht for every time she has been told she gave them a lessor amount of money

when they inspect the till they find the 1000 baht note with her name on it

Thai policy,

Boss never tells off his staff for scamming a client

He is more upset he looses face by them getting caught doing it

Why waste time writing a name on a note all the time ? its time consuming as well as damaging

Couple of options, a simple coloured dot in the same unobtrusive place or just mark the corner of the notes.

Or get a stack and run the coloured pen along the edge like you would a book edge, you will see the difference but not page by page unless looking carefully at the edge

Easy to prove they are yours when all the rest in your pocket have the same.

A small hole in the same place on all notes, real easy and can do stacks at a time.

could always use some UV ink pen but then shed have to cart the reader around too lol

[Virt]

Use the Australian POLYMER technology. The one the USA will not use eventhough it is safer and less prone to tampering and fraud. The USA do not use it as they did not invent it. Spoil sports! Many ASEAN countries are using our technology saving the very thing the BOI is on about.

Saw some of of those notes last year on Samui from an Aussie bloke we meet on Samui a few years back, and those notes seemed like they would be ideal for countries in Asia if not the entire world.

Could dip the notes in water and you could just wipe them dry after that without any problems.

Would be nice to have banknotes where you didn't have to worry about your money getting wet if you took a swim, walked in the heavy rain etc etc.

Plus it looked like they didn't have the normal wear and tear that paper notes normally get and i was told that they were actually more hygienic because the polymer didn't attract as much bacterias as paper notes do and if true that would be a nice sideeffect, after i know how much shit is attached on paper money and coins after attending a sterile course at my work where we tested the money we all had in our wallets.

It's crazy how infected our notes and coins are.

Most of the tests actually had more colonies of various bacterias on them than a standard toilet seat.

Could be fun to do the same test with some australian money and see if the polymer money is really cleaner, and therefore more healthy.

Maybe i should phone Mythbusters

Sorry for the off topic.

[Bakseeda]

Use the Australian POLYMER technology. The one the USA will not use eventhough it is safer and less prone to tampering and fraud. The USA do not use it as they did not invent it. Spoil sports! Many ASEAN countries are using our technology saving the very thing the BOI is on about.

Sorry but Polymer technology is NOT Australian.... Polymer banknotes were first used in Australia but now DeLa Ray a British PLC are the worlds biggest manufacturer of Polymer notes. Polymer technology has been around for a long time and there are many natural polymers.. No one is currently accredited with he invention of Polymer technology. But Australia were the first to use the banknotes made from plastic polymers. Almost everyone including the Yanks had this technology available. The Yanks love their dollars and I kinda like having them too..

[ramrod711]

I have never had a problem with wait staff taking dirty notes when I tip, can't imagine why.

[bigbamboo]

I expect notes do wear out faster than in many other countries since cash is king in Thailand and use of credit/debit cards is still behind western countries. Plus the notes are used in a tropical environment (hot and humid) that most likely causes them to deteriorate faster.

Not to mention being stuffed inside some sweaty cop's uniform.

[londonthai]

Just yestarday the junta announced, that anybody stamping or drawing a three finger salut will be hounted. You can still use this money

[Hawkman]

I always thought it was Monopoly money.

Sent from my iPhone using ThaiVisa app

[Thailand]

Not sure, but isn't it actually illegal to deface Thai banknotes by writing on them?

[kurnell]

I have just looked through my wallet out of 15 UK bank notes one has writing on it, the figures "920" on a £20 note, obviously a cashier in a bank or shop, it is a bad practice in any country and may be good idea to fine people who do it, OK not much chance of catching many that do it but a few fined say a few thousand Baht will be a big deterrent.

A few years ago i came to Chiang Mai with 600 quid in 20 pound notes and several of them had writing on them, because the Brit banks do it all the time. Anyway twice i went to change money at booths and twice i had notes thrown back at me as 'unusable because dirty' when they had writing on them. The girl said second time 'very bad to write on Queens paper, no want'. Third time i went i gave her clean notes and she gave me back several Thai notes that were very grubby, no writing but just dirty, so i threw back the bad ones and said 'dirty, no want', very bad to make Kings paper dirty' . Obviously she wasn't out with me that evening !

Give her some of those dirty bank note and she might

[mca]

I never have mine long enough to see what is on them.

Yeah I use always use mine inappropriately. Usually on imported cold cuts, cheese and cider.

[bangkapi]

All those fiat currencies are worth less every day until they reach the value of the paper or cloth they are printed on.

This article said that 80% of the new currency is used to replace the currency taken out of circulation.

Does that mean the extra 20% of banknotes is just added to the currency pool each year?

Would that contribute in some way to inflation?

[bangrak]

I remember Air Maroc crews paying their purchases with Dirhams, we accepted. Under a 'burnou', a Moroccan man wears very little textile, so, the use, we were told, was to stick the few banknotes he 'carried' on his sweaty chest. Need to tell you about the smell in the cash box of the sales guys who were serving the RAM flights at the end of the day? (I gave a premium to the guys accepting to 'do' those, and to the one counting the money) Just an anecdote about banknote problems in another country...

[bangrak]

Use the Australian POLYMER technology. The one the USA will not use eventhough it is safer and less prone to tampering and fraud. The USA do not use it as they did not invent it. Spoil sports! Many ASEAN countries are using our technology saving the very thing the BOI is on about.

Thailand made a (nice) attempt with the 50Baht note, still have a few, was also ideal inside beachware...

[Dr Bruce]

Under the new censorship laws expect to hear more stories about people writing on notes and damaging them and expect to hear no stories about protesters using a stamp to protest the coup.

[heybuz]

Use the Australian POLYMER technology. The one the USA will not use eventhough it is safer and less prone to tampering and fraud. The USA do not use it as they did not invent it. Spoil sports! Many ASEAN countries are using our technology saving the very thing the BOI is on about.

Sorry but Polymer technology is NOT Australian.... Polymer banknotes were first used in Australia but now DeLa Ray a British PLC are the worlds biggest manufacturer of Polymer notes. Polymer technology has been around for a long time and there are many natural polymers.. No one is currently accredited with he invention of Polymer technology. But Australia were the first to use the banknotes made from plastic polymers. Almost everyone including the Yanks had this technology available. The Yanks love their dollars and I kinda like having them too..

Plastic banknotes

1988

non-forgeable polymer money

The Reserve Bank of Australia, in collaboration with the CSIRO, released the world's first long lasting and counterfeit resistant polymer (plastic) banknotes in 1988 with a special Bicentennial $10 note issue.

There were problems. The ink tended to rub off ? as people who kept their money in their shoes found out the hard way! And they tended to resist folding. A new $5 note was issued without these problems, followed by new $10, $20, $50 and $100 notes. In 1996 Australia became the first country to have a full series of circulating polymer banknotes. They last ten times longer than paper notes.

Plastic notes could be illegally photocopied, but it 's virtually impossible to copy their feel, springiness and special features. The special features include clear windows and an optically variable device, an image that changes with the angle of view, which is made by a secret process invented by the CSIRO.

The polymer technology, called Guardian®, is produced by Securency Pty Ltd, a joint venture between the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) and UCB, a multi-national film, chemical and pharmaceutical company based in Belgium

An Australian company, Reln, recycles the worn banknotes into plastic compost bins and plumbing parts after they are shredded by the bank. Securency and Note Printing Australia, the Reserve Bank's manufacturing division, also make plastic money for a number of other countries.

[Martinl2022]

I suffer with this problem a lot, when I go to change my currency and they say no don't want that one, no can't change this one, it's not like it's a fake isit