Paper or plastic – which is best?

Money makes the world go around but does it matter if it’s paper or plastic money?

A few years ago if you looked in your wallet or purse you would probably have seen paper banknotes. Dollars, Euros, pound sterling and other currencies had paper notes of various denominations.

Today though there are 23 countries around the world that use plastic banknotes instead of paper notes.

Canada recently joined the list of plastic note countries and has just launched a plastic $100 note.

Why the switch to plastic notes though as after all the world has managed with paper notes for plenty of time. There are a few reasons for the switch.

Durability is perhaps the major one. The usable life of plastic banknotes for example can be up to 2.5 times longer than the traditional paper note.

There are also better security features on the plastic notes. Sophisticated holograms on plastic banknotes make it more difficult for counterfeit notes to be made.

So with all these benefits why don’t more countries use plastic notes?

On the downside of things, whilst the useful life is longer the initial upfront cost of production can be quite a bit higher with more complex banknote production facilities required.

Some people have also said that plastic notes are more slippery and therefore more difficult to count large amounts of money. To me though this wouldn’t necessarily be a major problem if the large amounts of banknotes that were being counted were mine!

Whichever way you look at it the chances are that over the next few years more and more notes will be plastic rather than paper and for any of you that have pulled a pair of trousers out of the washing machine and found a soggy broken paper banknote in the pocket this can only be a good thing.