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.
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The 20 hryvnia banknote of the 2018 design mimics the design of the 100 and 500 hryvnia banknotes.
The new 20 banknote retains the core design elements of the front and reverse sides of the 2003 design banknote. On the front side, the note has Ivan Franko's portrait, which is not too different from the portrait on the 20 hryvnia banknotes of the 2003 design, which is now in circulation.
At the same time, Ivan Franko's portrait was moved to the center of the banknote (previously, it was on the right side), which corresponds to the placement of the portraits on the 100-hryvnia banknote of the 2014 design and 500-hryvnia banknotes of the 2015 design.
The optically variable element is placed on the right side of the portrait, as on the rest of the new banknotes. Also, the image of the face value has been expanded, the mark for people with visual impairments has been improved, and so on.
The image of the building of the Lviv Opera House remains on the reverse side.
The size of the new banknote will be the same as that of the 20-hryvnia note of the 2003 design. The color of the new banknote, like that of the previous one, is mostly green. Thus, the banknote paper is also tinted in this color. The color and size of the banknote make it easily distinguishable from other denominations, which helps users recognize the denomination and make it impossible to counterfeit banknotes of small denominations into those with large denominations by adding zeros.
The updated banknote contains the following basic security features:
multi-tone watermark - a portrait of Ivan Franko visible when the banknote is held up to the light, which is a copy of the portrait printed on the front side of the banknote;
security thread - a polymer thread completely imbedded in the paper and visible when the front of the banknote is held against the light (the tape is shifted from the center of the banknote to improve the wear resistance of the banknote);
optically variable ink (OVI), with which a stylized image of a flower on the front side of the banknote that changes color when looking at a banknote from different angles from purple (crimson-purple) to olive green;
improved ultraviolet protection;
changed and improved (on the reverse side) infrared protection;
a serial number of black color, printed in a font with a variable height of the characters and placed vertically along the right edge of the back of the banknote.
