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Banknote of 2024 Voting Open

Voting for the IBNS Banknote of 2024 has started and runs to the 17th March.

IBNS Members can vote online here - https://www.theibns.org/bnoyvote

 
Latest Banknote of 2024 Nominations

The latest nominations for the Banknote of 2024 are: Philippines: 500-Piso Note, Cambodia: 200,000 Riels Note, Mongolia: 5,000 Togrog Note

 
IBNS Journal 63-4

includes articles on Alves Reis and the Portugese Banknote Case, Oxford Old Bank, Romanian Athenaeum on Banknotes, Banknotes in a Crisis?, When Governments Counterfeit: Part II, Wrong Country! Foreign Motifs on Banknotes

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Banknote of 2021 Nominations

Nominations Closed 31st January 2022

The International Bank Note Society (IBNS) announces that its voting membership has again selected the Banco de Mexico to receive its annual prestigious “Bank Note of the Year Award” for 2021. With well over 100 new banknotes released worldwide during 2021, only 20 were deemed of sufficiently new design to be member nominated. Unlike most years when there has been a clear favorite from the start, the vote between first and second place was nip and tuck until the very end when Mexico’s 50 Peso note edged Sao Tome and Principe’s 200 Dobra bill (slave leader Rei Amador, butterflies, sunbird and flower). There was an actual third place tie between Costa Rica’s 10,000 Colones note (abolition of the army leader, rainforest, flora and sloth) and the Bank of England’s 50 Pound (Queen Elizabeth II with Alan Turing and his war code breaking computer). Rounding out the top eight vote getters were Romania’s 20 Lei (country heroine with crocus), the Royal Bank of Scotland’s 50 Pound (social reformer Flora Stevenson, flowers and birds), China’s 20 Yuan (2022 Winter Olympics theme), and the Cook Islands 3 Dollar (Ina riding shark, fishing canoe and carved wood statue) banknotes.

Front of Mexico's 50 Pesos Note
Back of Mexico's 50 Pesos Note

Find out more detail about Mexico's 50 Pesos Note and watch a video about the note

The Banco de Mexico was again both the printer and issuer of this award-winning design banknote, which is part of the bank’s current G Series first introduced in 2018.  The vertical format note is printed on polymer and features Tenochtitlan, the capital of the Aztec empire.  The reverse image features a salamander found in Mexico’s ecosystem of lakes and waterways.  The design continues to highlight Mexican cultural and historic characteristics with new graphic motifs.  Produced by the Banco de Mexico’s new printing complex located in Jalisco, which began operation just before the coronavirus pandemic, the banknote has significantly improved security features which coordinate the transition to a polymer substrate.  Polymer banknotes continue to be popular IBNS favorites and are now perennial award winners. 


A guide has been produced covering the Bank Note of 2021 nominations in great detail. Explore the visible security features of each of the notes; Iridescent inks, watermarks, security strips and holographic features, as well as the Ultraviolet features.
Download a copy to learn more about the nominations.

The nominations for the Banknote of 2021 are listed below: