Your Thoughts About Coloured Money?

Harder to counterfeit.

Looks pretty.

You can tell the denominations apart at a glance. I find American money annoying because it all looks the same.

@dappled_leaves I noticed a few days ago some of our money was much more colorful. I don’t know what denomination it was or if it is a very recent change. I don’t handle cash much so I am surprised by how both coins and paper look now and then.

@JLeslie I noticed that on a recent trip, too! Aren’t the tens a bit redder in some places? It’s a good idea.

easy to tell them apart at a glance:
A small pale green-blue one: 5€
a medium brown one: 10€
a blue one: 20
orange: 50
green: 100
yellow: 200
purple: 500

no need to look at what number is printed on it.

@dappled_leaves I don’t know honestly. I never think of US money as being different colors by denomination. I guess I could google it. Usually, when changes happen, they do it on one bill, and then another, but in the end they all look similar. I think probably since I was born and raised in America I don’t look at the color of money to distinguish how much the bill is worth, so it’s a non issue to me.

To prevent counterfeiting it’s very useful to have the bills different sizes and that helps blind people too. As far as I know America isn’t entertaining that idea though.

For my dad, and all the other colorblind people, the color wouldn’t matter. It’s really no effort to just look for the dollar amount on the bill. If I’m in a foreign country I always look for the number on the bill, I rarely learn the color or pictures in the short time I’m visiting.

It is also practice in a lot of countries to change the design from time to time again to reduce counterfeiting. It also gives them an opportunity celebrate a well known figure from their country. Instead of a limited range of presidents and founding fathers what about Edwin Hubble, Thomas Edison, Mark Twain, Aaron Copland, Dr. King and perhaps a significant but less well known founding father?

@JLeslie I just checked my leftover cash, and the number 5 is purple on the rear of that bill. I think that might be the only one I noticed.

We have a number of tactile features for the blind – the bills are all the same size, but they do have braille – I guess that’s easier to do on plastic bills. Our coins are also distinguishable by touch, as yours are.

I think having bills of different sizes would offend my sense of symmetry, haha.

Lol. I think also it’s tricky in wallets. The small ones might be missed when glancing in your wallet? I’m not sure. I’m going to look at the money in my wallet tonight. A $20 can last me for a few weeks, even two months sometimes I bet. I almost never use cash.

Braille is a great idea! I’ve never noticed that on bills.

When I worked in retail our blind customers had to completely depend on us to give them proper change (change in the sense of balance due to them including bills, you’re right our coins are easily distinguishable by touch). They kept their bills in a certain order in their wallet, but still obviously a mistake could be made and we were the final check. I guess people who are blind have to rely in trust and honesty a lot even though they are very capable of doing so much.

America has a really hard time changing to new currency. We tried the $2 bill and it never caught on. You used to be able to find the on military bases, I don’t know if they are still circulating. We also can’t seem to use half dollar and dollar coins while other countries use “dollar” coins quite regularly. Now everything is going more towards credit cards anyway, and less cash is handled, but it’s still used enough that it isn’t going away too fast.