The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) has presented the 2018 design and improved security features of the 20-hryvnia banknote.
During the presentation, Director of the NBU Cash Circulation Department Viktor Zaivenko emphasized that hryvnia banknote’s redesign and security features improvement by the NBU was aimed at enhancing the banknote’s reliability.
Under international standards, banknotes and coins are to be redesigned at certain time intervals in order to minimize or completely prevent fraudsters’ attempts to counterfeit the banknotes.
The redesigned 20-hryvnia banknote will be introduced into circulation on 25 September 2018.
The redesigned 20 hryvnia banknote of the 2018 design is legal tender within Ukraine and shall be accepted at its face value by all individuals and legal entities without any limitation all over the territory of Ukraine.
“This is the third banknote in the new series of the national currency’s denominations. The banknote comes as the NBU continues to redesign the previous denominations under a redesign plan it launched in 2014 to improve the hryvnia’s reliability,” Viktor Zaivenko said.
According to him, the NBU primarily plans to issue and put into circulation approximately five million of 20-hryvnia notes to further distribute them among Ukrainian banks, which in turn will supply the new banknotes to Ukrainians.
As of the beginning of July, the quantity of 20-hryvnia notes in circulation stood at nearly 127 million (some 4.4% of total banknotes in circulation).
Viktor Zaivenko underscored that 2003 and 2018 design banknotes will be in parallel circulation.
After the introduction of the new 20-hryvnia banknote, the public will not need to exchange older designs for the new one.
The NBU will use the new banknotes to replace the worn-out and damaged 20-hryvnia banknotes of the 2003 design.
“The NBU controls the withdrawal of worn-out banknotes and replaces them with new ones. Replacing worn-out banknotes with new ones is a continual process that does not inconvenience the public,” he said.
Overall, the NBU withdraws from circulation about 800 million worn-out banknotes of all denominations every year. Nearly half of them are low-denomination banknotes (1 to 10 hryvnias). Last year, for instance, the NBU withdrew a total of 749 million of worn-out and significantly worn-out banknotes worth UAH 48 billion, including 72 million of 20-hryvnia banknotes worth close to UAH 1.5 billion. This represents nearly 10% of the total amount of worn-out and significantly worn-out banknotes withdrawn from circulation.
“When working on the creation of the new banknote denominations, the NBU applied cutting-edge design and security technologies. We have full confidence that Ukrainians will give the redesigned 20-hryvnia banknote a warm welcome and that they will like the new generation of the national currency’s banknotes,” said Victor Zaivenko, director of the Cash Circulation Department of the NBU.
Source: bank.gov.ua
