BRITAIN’S first plastic fiver is launched this week – a wipe-clean note
which can survive a washing machine cycle.
It is printed on polymer, a thin flexible film more hard-wearing than the
current cotton paper and virtually impossible to tear.
Drinks can also be poured over the note, without it getting soggy.
The £5 will feature Sir Winston Churchill and will be unveiled on Thursday at
his birthplace, Blenheim Palace.
Churchill will replace 19th Century prison-reformer Elizabeth Fry on the more
durable note.
It will go into circulation in September.
The new notes are around 15 per cent smaller and are expected to last about
five years, three years longer than current ones.
New £10 notes, featuring author Jane Austen, will follow next summer and new
£20 note, featuring artist JMW Turner, will be in circulation by 2020.
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The Bank of England hopes the notes will make it more difficult for fraudsters
to copy.
Its chief cashier Victoria Cleland said the polymer notes have been popular
with members of the public who have been shown them.
She told the Sunday Times: “They often said, ‘Wow, that’s really cool.’ You
don’t often get ‘cool’ and ‘the Bank of England’ in the same sentence”.
She added: “They are more modern and I think they’re beautiful.”
She said the new notes are more resilient to a spin in the washing machine,
but that “it is a fortunate by-product” and “we’re not encouraging people to
do that”.
Plastic banknotes are already used in more than 30 countries across the world.
Australia was the first to launch plastic notes in 1988, followed by countries
including New Zealand and Singapore.
British bank notes have been made from cotton paper since the Bank of England
was formed in 1694.