Presentations

In the context of a rapidly changing global payments landscape, the future of the banknote industry relies on the synergetic cooperation among the issuing authority and industry players to collectively achieve an optimised cash cycle.

To maintain banknotes as a strong currency for future generations, banknotes must fully meet the fundamental needs of users in terms of payment means – cost effectiveness, security and usability.

A large part of the banknote sorting and authentication can be delegated to commercial banks and businesses through the use of highly secured machine-readable technologies and equipment. This cuts the volume of banknote in transit for verification tasks and saves on processing costs while enabling commercial entities to detect, authenticate and recycle banknotes and benefiting from a cost-efficient flow of cash.

At SICPA, ink-based technologies have been developed as a coherent approach to the multiple challenges of an optimised cash cycle. Built on centuries of artistic heritage, Intaglio printing is the cornerstones of banknote production, being in itself security, a carrier of security features and reinforcing banknote durability. It serves as an ideal vehicle of exclusive level 2 machine-readable features based on infrared and magnetic detection, thereby addressing the complex needs of the banknote industry: machine-readable security (for commercial bank recycling uses), banknote durability (central bank savings), production timeframe and printability (security printing competitiveness), and enhanced usability (intuitive detection and payment ease for the public).

An optimised cash cycle, characterised by flow efficiency, cost savings and greater sophistication in counterfeit detection technologies, will positively influence the future of the banknote industry.

Since the start of the century we have seen that banknote prices have come under pressure due to a stronger competition in the market. At KBA-NotaSys we see it as our responsibility to support our clients in their goal of efficiently producing banknotes and high-security documents. We have therefore introduced some innovative new technologies as well as a new process approach.

By combining technologies our customers can reduce their overall manpower as well as their work in progress stock. Other technologies are focused on reducing waste or minimising ink consumption, two major cost drivers in the production process. At the same time we continuously work on the introduction of cost-effective but at the same time visually striking security features for the general public.

This presentation will highlight how the latest technological and process innovations support the security printing industry in the efficient creation of highly secure and aesthetically pleasing banknotes.

Komori Corporation has been supplying banknote and security printing presses to the industry since 1958. During this time there have been several new technological developments that have benefitted banknote printers worldwide and enabled improved quality and production.

However, Komori continue to invest time and money to a dedicated research and development programme to further improve their products. Working together with their customers, Komori investigates what is required, not only by the Central Banks and Commercial Security Printers, but by the printers themselves, whilst using that equipment.

Komori discovered some time back that combining certain processes would allow printers to streamline production and improve productivity and this presentation will introduce you to the latest offering from Komori.

The Currency NV32 Combination Press was launched during the summer of 2016 in our state-of-the-art Tsukuba plant in Japan. The press combines the two processes of numbering and varnishing banknotes in a single pass. Komori has utilised years of considerable experience of combination technology gained from working with their customers to bring to the market this latest innovation.

The main idea came from a request to identify a general security design with the help of a smartphone.

Developing such a feature is challenging. During the development process, we have analysed the printing process, the capturing process and certainly the forgeries. In the printing process analysis, we have compared different printing technologies that might be used during the counterfeiting process.

As we are talking about high security printed products, the print itself by definition should be a high-resolution offset or intaglio print printed with high quality printing machines. The identification would be done with a smartphone and the idea is to develop an application that can identify and authenticate the security print from counterfeits.   

As the resolution of a smartphone camera is limited, we had to find the most optimal settings, correct or eliminate distortions generated by the lens of the capturing device. Initially, we have selected one type of smartphone to reduce the number of variables in the developing process. The resolution of the analysed pictures is approximately 600dpi. For justified reasons (developing environment, latest technology camera resolution, etc.) we have selected the Galaxy SII/SIII/SIV and we optimized the process for this hardware. The minimum hardware requirement and the application will be optimized for other types of smartphones too.   

From the Central Bank of Hungary, we got a full range of forgeries starting from the very simple photocopies to the most complex offset printed banknotes. The research as input data used the forgeries of the Hungarian Forint.

The existing forged designs were only the beginning; today we know that a special structure or pattern is needed, printed either with offset or preferably Intaglio, to be able to identify the originality of a banknote. The pattern would be user definable and has to fulfil certain requirements. 

The presentation will describe the process itself and give some details about the challenges that we faced during the development process including statistics and test results.

The report is dedicated to the evolution of hologram security elements used for the security of banknotes, security papers and ID documents. The tendency of application of voluminous photopolymer holograms in security printed products as optically variable security features has been traced using the examples of the world trends. Latest developments of NPO “Krypten” in the area and security solutions using unique visual features forming the effects of movement and volume, have been analyzed in the report. 

The latest high-end security features developed for polycarbonate ID documents as passport, national ID cards, driver license cards and residence permit cards

The presentation will describe the latest development of optical security features for polycarbonate documents. It will show the performance of proprietary origination technologies and their ability for creating of highly sophisticated overt and covert security features. The potential of increasing the complexity of optical protection of polycarbonate documents will be discussed.

Durasafe is a technology platform that offers the flexibility to meet the needs at both ends of the banknote spectrum. For banknotes that act as a store of value, or where there is a strong counterfeiting risk, it offers a great many options for security to be designed onto the note and built into the substrate itself.  Where the notes have a greater velocity of circulation, and are subjected to greater wear and tear, it offers much enhanced mechanical resistance, while maintaining the features that we all check instinctively: the crispness of paper, watermarks, security threads, and the tactility of intaglio ink.  In this presentation we want to explore how Durasafe offers the best of the paper and polymer worlds to each of the stakeholders in the cash cycle.