Skip to main content
Best News Website or Mobile Service
WAN-IFRA Digital Media Awards Worldwide 2022
Best News Website or Mobile Service
Digital Media Awards Worldwide 2022
Hamburger Menu

Advertisement

Advertisement

East Asia

High-tech cash: Japan launches banknotes with hologram portraits

The bills feature fresh faces and high-tech features to deter counterfeiters.

High-tech cash: Japan launches banknotes with hologram portraits

A man holds a new 10,000 yen note at a bank in Saitama on the day the new banknotes were issued on Jul 3, 2024. (Photo: AFP/Jiji Press)

TOKYO: Japan began circulating its first new banknotes in 20 years on Wednesday (Jul 3), featuring three-dimensional portraits of the founders of financial and female education institutions in an attempt to frustrate counterfeiters.

The notes use printed patterns to generate holograms of the portraits facing different directions, depending on the angle of view, employing a technology that Japan's National Printing Bureau says is the world's first for paper money.

"Faces of those representing Japan's capitalism, women's empowerment and technology innovation are on the new bills," Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said at a function.

The step comes just as the economy moves into a growth-driven phase for the first time in three decades, he added.

Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda hold the country’s new banknotes in a frame, during a ceremony to mark the release of the banknotes, at the BOJ headquarters in Tokyo, Japan, Jul 3, 2024. (Photo: AP/Kyodo News/Japan Pool)

Key companies are raising workers' wages at the fastest rate in 33 years, but lingering inflation, fed by the rapid weakening of the yen currency, keeps consumption and the mood of business sluggish, recent economic data show.

Existing bills will stay in use, but train stations, parking lots and ramen shops are scrambling to upgrade payment machines as the government pushes consumers and businesses to use less cash in its bid to digitise the economy.

The new 10,000-yen (US$62) note depicts Eiichi Shibusawa (1840-1931), the founder of the first bank and stock exchange, who is often called "the father of Japanese capitalism".

06:39 Min

Japan began circulating its first new banknotes in 20 years on Wednesday (Jul 3), featuring three-dimensional portraits of the founders of financial and female education institutions in an attempt to frustrate counterfeiters. The notes use printed patterns to generate holograms of the portraits facing different directions, depending on the angle of view, employing a technology that Japan's National Printing Bureau says is the world's first for paper money. CNA's Michiyo Ishida takes a look at how the new banknotes are being celebrated in Japan and the significance of cash in Japanese society.

The new 5,000-yen bill portrays educator Umeko Tsuda (1864-1929), who founded one of the first women's universities in Japan, while the 1,000-yen bill features a pioneering medical scientist, Shibasaburo Kitasato (1853-1931).

While Kishida talked up the latest technology to fight counterfeiting, it is not a major problem in Japan. The 681 fake banknotes police detected in 2023 represented a sharp drop from a record high of 25,858 in 2004.

A person shows new 10,000, 5,000 and 1,000 Yen banknotes after he withdrew bills from a ATM machine at a bank on Jul 3, 2024, in Tokyo. (Photo: AP/Ayaka McGill)

Authorities plan to print about 7.5 billion newly-designed bills by the end of the current fiscal year, swelling the 18.5 billion banknotes, worth 125 trillion yen, in circulation by December 2023.

"Cash is a secure means of payment that can be used by anyone, anywhere, and at any time, and it will continue to play a significant role" even when alternative payment methods prevail, Bank of Japan Governor Kazuo Ueda told a Wednesday ceremony celebrating the new notes.

The Bank of Japan has experimented with digital currencies, but the government has made no decision whether to issue a digital yen.

"NO SALES IMPACT"

The first renewal of paper money since 2004 spurred businesses to upgrade payment machines for cash-loving customers.

Although cashless payments in Japan have almost tripled over the past decade to make up 39 per cent of consumer spending in 2023, that share lags global peers and should rise to as high as 80 per cent to improve productivity, the government says.

Roughly 90 per cent of bank ATMs, train ticket machines and retail cash registers are prepared to accept new bills, but only half of restaurant and parking ticket machines are ready, the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association says.

Nearly 80 per cent of 2.2 million drink vending machines nationwide also need upgrades, it added.

"It might take until year-end to respond to this," said Takemori Kawanami, an executive at ticket machine company Elcom. "That's too slow, but we are short of components," he added, as client orders for upgrades exceeded expectations.

Many Japanese fast-food restaurants such as ramen shops and beef bowl stores rely on ticket machines to cut labour costs, but some small business owners battling inflation are unhappy with the extra investment the new bills entail.

"The machine replacement has no sales impact, so it's only negative for us, on top of rising costs of labour and ingredients," said Shintaro Sekiguchi, who spent about 600,000 yen for ticket machines at three ramen shops he runs in southern Tokyo.

Source: Reuters/cm

Advertisement

Also worth reading

Advertisement