Thursday, November 22, 2007

New $5 has many new anti-counterfeit features


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government introduced a new $5 bill on Thursday that includes purple ink, several watermarks and other security features to deter counterfeiters.
The bill features a large, purple numeral "5" on its back side and a purple seal on the front, continuing the increased use of color in the "greenbacks" that have long stood in drab contrast to the more elaborate bills used by many other countries.
The new bill, which will go into circulation in 2008, will include two watermarks -- a large numeral "5" to the right of the portrait of President Abraham Lincoln, and a column of smaller "5"s to Lincoln's left.
An embedded security thread, bearing the letters "USA" and the numeral "5" in an alternating pattern, runs vertically to the right of the portrait.The redesign of the $5 bill will also help protect against a method of counterfeiting that bleaches, or removes the ink from, a $5 bill and prints over it to create a fake $100 bill. By eliminating as many similarities as possible between the $5 and $100 denominations, the new design foils counterfeiting and protects U.S. currency users.