The new year has another surprise in store for everyone: new 20-euro bills will suddenly feel completely different.
The usual paper-rough surface of the banknotes will feel a little different when you reach into your wallet in the future. As the ORF reports, all twenties are now to be coated with a special varnish as standard.
The same procedure has already been used for the second series of fives and tens, which has been in circulation since 2013. “From 2021 onwards, only coated 20-euro banknotes will be produced, so that uncoated 20-euro banknotes will gradually disappear from the cash cycle,” said board member Johannes Beermann of the Deutsche Bundesbank in Frankfurt.
The painting should make the banknotes more durable. The low-end banknotes in particular often changed hands and were therefore soiled or damaged particularly quickly. From a certain point onwards, the notes become unusable, but the paintwork can significantly increase the average service life. That would have been shown in laboratory tests, concluded Beermann.
