Unique security features inspire greater confidence in banknotes

Nowhere is confidence in a product more important than with banknotes. Security features are intended to put a stop to illegal copying by helping to distinguish real banknotes from counterfeits. Along with watermarks, which have been part of banknotes for over 350 years, security threads are the most important security feature and also the easiest for people to recognise.

Colour and movement

The arrival of scanners and color printers in day-to-day life in the nineties posed new challenges for banknote printing companies and manufacturers of banknote paper. As a result, they developed their security features even further. The embedded metallic threads used in the early days were only the beginning. Nowadays, developers primarily rely on optical effects such as changing colours or images. Holograms and colour-shifting effects in the form of threads, stripes, or patches now protect many different banknotes and pose an ongoing hurdle to counterfeiting attempts.

Security features have to be counterfeit-proof and, at the same time, clearly identifiable beyond any doubt. That is why it is so important for security features to incorporate eye-catching colour and movement effects to attract the attention of the user.