How to plan public education for a new banknote series

The best public education campaigns for a new banknote start with the reason for the change, not the security features. They keep teaching long after launch day, and they measure what people learned.

A new banknote is judged on its first day in circulation. If a shop refuses it, or a rumour says it is fake, trust in the note and in the bank behind it takes a knock. Public education is how a central bank prevents that.

Every conference presentation on the subject gives the same advice: prepare early, communicate clearly, get the timing right. The advice is sound. It also assumes a team and a budget that not all issuing authorities have.

I have worked in the currency industry for two decades. In 2023 I wrote a public education playbook for new note issues, which has since supported more than a dozen banknote and series issuances. Two recent examples show what good looks like, at different scales. At the end I look at how to make the same ideas work with a tighter budget and a small team.

The first is Barbados. In December 2022 the Central Bank of Barbados began issuing a polymer series. It was only the second redesign since the bank first issued its own currency in 1973, and the first time Barbadian notes were not printed on paper [1][2]. Sherri Bishop, Deputy Director, Communications and Outreach, led the campaign inside the bank, with the bank’s project team and a local agency. It was a finalist for Best New Currency Public Education Program at the 2023 Currency Awards [1].

The second is the Bank of England, with more than 4.98 billion notes in circulation worth about £91.5 billion [3]. Its recent work shows how to involve the public years before a launch and how to say clearly what stays the same. Its message has also moved on a long way since its first polymer note in 2016.

Explain why, and talk with people

A new note raises questions before it raises interest. Why is the money changing? Are my old notes still good? Is plastic money safe? Barbados set out to answer those questions first. Its objectives were simple: people should know about the new series and why it was coming, feel neutral or positive about the designs, and know the main security features [1].

The bank chose its tone with care. It spoke in a conversational voice. The launch set had lounge furniture instead of a lectern, the speeches were short, and the designs were revealed with a trailer-style film. On radio, bank staff had conversations with presenters rather than formal interviews. Short dramatised videos showed one friend explaining the new notes to another, which dealt with likely worries before they could spread [1].

“There was a lot we needed to communicate about our new series, but none of our messages would resonate if people weren’t paying attention, so we understood that capturing Barbadians’ attention was our first task. Comms having a seat at the table from early gave us time to do our research, develop a cohesive and creative strategy, and start executing well in advance of the rollout. That headstart also gave us more time to adjust as needed throughout the campaign.”

Sherri Bishop, Deputy Director, Communications and Outreach, Central Bank of Barbados

A central bank’s natural voice is formal. For a change that reaches every wallet, I think a voice people recognise from daily life gets heard more often and trusted sooner. Tone is worth deciding on purpose.

One home, many doors

Barbados built a dedicated web page for the new series as the hub of the campaign. It held the videos, note images, questions and answers, articles and materials to download [1].

The bank also spoke first on its own channels. The Governor’s announcement went live on all the bank’s social media accounts at the same time as the video went to the media, and the launch was streamed live [1]. People heard the bank’s own words before anyone else’s.

Paid media went where it added most. Radio, the cheapest broadcast option, was used most often, to explain the reasons for the change and build interest before launch and issue day. Television and newspapers were saved for key moments, partly to reach older Barbadians. Short videos on supermarket checkout screens caught people with cash in their hand. They ran in a set order: first the designs and the issue date, then how to handle polymer, then the security features [1].

Events did two jobs. The launch and a public roadshow let people take part in the change, and they gave the bank photos and video to reuse for months. Gift bags from the roadshow carried education materials into people’s homes [1].

Involve people early, and say what stays the same

The Bank of England began engagement with its next series with a public consultation on the theme in 2025. More than 44,000 people responded, and nature was chosen. A second consultation in 2026 asked people to pick from 18 shortlisted animals. It drew 478,531 responses, the most the bank has had for a banknote imagery consultation. In October 2026 the bank named the four central images: the Atlantic puffin, barn owl, buff-tailed bumblebee and European hedgehog [4]. The first note is years away, and hundreds of thousands of people already have a reason to look for it.

Two details stood out for me. The bank explained that animals have shapes and movements people recognise, which can be built into security features, and that each note needs a different animal so the notes are easy to tell apart [5]. When the design story and the security feature use the same image, one message does both jobs. The bank also said early on that the Governor makes the final choice and may not pick the most popular animals [5]. That protects trust if the result differs from the vote.

The Bank of England is just as clear about what does not change. When notes with the portrait of King Charles III entered circulation on 5 June 2024, the bank said that notes with the portrait of Queen Elizabeth II remain legal tender, that the new notes would appear very gradually, and that people could exchange old notes at the bank from 5 to 30 June [6]. Those are the first questions people ask. Answering them early heads off queues and rumours.

The same care shows after a withdrawal. The paper £20 and £50 notes stopped being legal tender on 30 September 2022 [7]. People can still exchange them with the bank, with no deadline, by paying them into a bank account, at the Post Office, by post or in person in London [8]. Each route suits a different group, from someone with a few notes and no bank account to an estate with a large sum.

From 2016 to 2026: how the message moved on

The Bank of England is now planning its second generation of polymer notes, and its message has moved with the times.

In 2016 the job was to explain a new material. The bank’s first polymer note, the £5 featuring Sir Winston Churchill, was unveiled at Blenheim Palace, Churchill’s birthplace, in June and issued in September [17]. The message was about the product. The new notes were “cleaner, safer and stronger” than paper, would last about two and a half times as long, and could survive a washing machine [17][18]. The bank had consulted the public on the material itself, and 87% of respondents supported the move to polymer [17]. Bank staff took the note on regional roadshows, and people were given a firm deadline: paper £5 notes could be spent until 5 May 2017 [18].

In 2026 the material no longer needs explaining. People have used polymer notes for a decade. The harder question now is why a new note matters at all, when fewer people pay with cash. The bank’s answer is to give the public a share in the design. The 2016 consultation asked whether people supported polymer. The 2026 consultations asked what they wanted to see on their money, and drew hundreds of thousands of responses [4]. When the animals were announced, the bank’s message was that “cash still matters” [4].

I think the shift holds a lesson for every issuing authority. A first polymer issue is a product launch: explain the material, its benefits and the deadline for the old notes. A second generation is a relevance campaign: give people a reason to care about something familiar. Most central banks will face both challenges, maybe a decade apart, and the second is harder.

How do you teach people to check a new note?

The security message works best when it is short and repeated. The euro uses “feel, look, tilt” [9]. The US dollar uses “feel, tilt, check” [10]. Anyone can remember three words and do the check in seconds, and both have been used on every piece of material for years. Remembering what to look for, or explaining how it works, is a topic for another article.

Three habits help the message stick. Teach two or three features, not all of them: something to feel, something to look at and something dynamic or colour-shifting. Show hands doing the check, because the action teaches faster than an explanation of how a feature is made. And keep the materials available after the campaign ends. The Bank of England offers businesses a free booklet, a poster, a training film and about 30 minutes of online training all year round [11].

Barbados paired its media work with Know Your Money seminars, backed by flyers, booklets and posters that could also be downloaded [1]. Seminars reach cashiers, small traders and community groups who may never see a social media post.

Design for everyone, and get the machines ready

The easiest note to explain is one that its users helped to design. The Central Bank of Barbados consulted the Association for the Blind and Deaf early in the project and again later. Together they chose tactile marks in a different shape for each denomination. The bank also made the colours brighter, increased the contrast between denominations and enlarged the numerals [12]. The Reserve Bank of Australia did something similar for the vision-impaired community. Its notes carry raised bumps, from one on the $5 note to five on the $100 [13]. When users have chosen a feature, the campaign is explaining something they already trust.

The cash industry must be ready early too. People judge a new note by whether shops, ATMs and ticket machines accept it. When Japan issued new notes in July 2024, about 90% of bank ATMs, train ticket machines and retail cash registers were ready, but only about half of restaurant and parking ticket machines [14].

The Bank of England has two tools that I would like to see copied more widely. It sets a standard for machines that accept, count or sort notes, and publishes a monthly list of models and software versions that meet it [15]. Its free Banknote Checking Scheme gives businesses training materials, a newsletter, a named contact and early notice of changes such as withdrawals [16]. A bank with those in place can reach retailers months before a launch.

How do you know the campaign is working?

Most campaigns are judged on reach: views, posts and coverage. Those numbers show activity. They do not show what people learned.

Barbados surveyed the public in September 2022, six months after the announcement and three months before the notes entered circulation [1]. Three quarters of respondents (75%) were aware of the new series and 69% had seen the designs. Of those who had seen them, 47% liked them and only 2% did not. But only 54% knew why the notes were changing. The bank then made a series of short videos answering the questions people had asked [1].

That is the habit I would most like other banks to copy. Survey while there is still time to change course, then survey again after issue. The most useful question is simple: can you name one security feature on the new note without being prompted? Compare the answer with a baseline taken before the campaign, and you know whether Know Your Money worked.

How do you run a campaign with a tight budget and a small team?

A new banknote series is a government communications campaign that has to reach every adult in the country, including people who never read a newspaper or open a banking app. Few government campaigns have a target that wide. Yet a new series is often run on a minimal budget, with public education treated as part of the note contract.

When a government needs every adult to change a habit, it usually runs the change as a programme, not a set of materials. Before the UK moved to decimal currency in 1971, a Decimal Currency Board was set up in 1967 to oversee the changeover. It worked with businesses first, then retailers. In the final months it ran what the Royal Mint Museum calls “one of the most intensive publicity campaigns ever directed at the people of Britain”, with millions of booklets and particular care to reassure older people [19]. A new banknote series needs the same reach, and benefits from the same approach.

In practice, the communications team may be two or three people who also handle the monetary policy statement, the annual report and the Governor’s speeches. The currency department has its own priorities and its own day job. The money for launch materials often sits inside the banknote contract, which leaves little for anything else.

Budget is where most campaigns fall short. A video, a set of posters and a leaflet are the parts of a campaign everyone can see, and they are needed. But they do not teach a country to use a new note. What makes them work is less visible: research, distribution, training, testing with real users, and answering questions as they arrive. That work needs its own budget line, however small, agreed before the campaign begins. When a banknote tender offers public education at no extra cost, the offer should carry no weight in the scoring.

A tight budget and a small team are a normal starting point, and they can still produce a good launch. This is what I would do with them.

Give one person the whole job. The scarcest resource is usually one person’s time. Launches go wrong in the gaps between departments, so name one owner with authority across currency, communications and cash operations, and protect their time for the year before issue.

Use the cash cycle as your distribution network. Every new note travels from the central bank to commercial banks and cash centres, and from there to tellers, ATMs and shops. Send the education materials the same way, with the first deliveries of new notes. A leaflet in a cash delivery reaches a cashier on the same day as the note.

Train the people who hand out change. Most people first see a new note when someone gives it to them: a bank teller, a supermarket cashier, a bus conductor, a market trader. Train bank tellers first, and ask the banks to train their business customers. It costs little and reaches places a campaign never will.

Borrow other people’s audiences. Mobile network operators, utilities and government payment offices already reach almost every household. A text message from a phone company, a line on a utility bill or a poster at a pension payment point costs far less than advertising. Pension pay days deserve special attention, because that is where many older cash users gather.

Prepare for the coverage you will get for free. A new note is news. Journalists will cover the design reveal and the first day of issue whether you pay or not. Give them good images, a short explainer and the check method in one pack, so the free coverage teaches as well as shows.

If you can afford one message, make it one feature. Choose the feature that is easiest for people to check and hardest for counterfeiters to copy. On many polymer notes, the clear window is a strong candidate. One feature repeated everywhere does more than five features explained once.

Borrow a survey too. You do not need your own research programme. Ask the national statistics office or a commercial bank to add three questions to a survey it already runs, once before issue and once after.

Ask your peers. Central banks share more with each other than outsiders expect. A bank that launched a new note recently will often share its research questions, scripts and lessons learned. Barbados put its education materials online for anyone to download [1].

Planning matters more than scale

None of this needs a large budget, but it does need a budget of its own. Barbados kept traditional media in a supporting role because of its cost, and relied on its own channels, radio, events and seminars [1]. The Bank of England does the same at a greater scale, and keeps the work going between launches. What both have in common is planning: knowing what people need to learn, and reaching them where they already handle cash.

In a future Perspectives article I will look at how to help people remember what to check on a new note. Sign up to receive notifications of new articles and a copy of my public education whitepaper.

Richard Sokl plans public education campaigns for central banks and issuing authorities through Sokl Advisory.

Questions and answers

What should a public education campaign for a new banknote explain first?

The reason for the change. People accept a change they understand. In Barbados, a survey three months before issue found that 75% of people knew about the new series but only 54% knew why the notes were changing, so the bank made short videos to answer that question [1].

When should a central bank start planning public education for a new banknote?

Early enough to involve the public and to survey them before issue, while there is still time to change the campaign. The Bank of England began consulting the public on its next series years before the first note will appear [4][5].

How should people be taught to check a new banknote?

With one short check that uses two or three features: something to feel, something to look at and something that moves or changes colour. The euro uses “feel, look, tilt” and the US dollar uses “feel, tilt, check” [9][10]. Repeat the same check on every piece of material for years.

How can a central bank with a small team and a tight budget run a good campaign?

Give one person the whole job. Send materials through the cash cycle with the first deliveries of new notes, train bank tellers and cashiers, and use the audiences of phone companies, utilities and pension payment offices. Ask an existing survey to add three questions before and after issue.

Sources

1. International Association of Currency Affairs, “Standing Secure: Barbados’ 2022 Polymer Banknote Series”, Central Bank of Barbados, Currency Awards 2023. Link
2. Central Bank of Barbados, “You asked, we answered: what you wanted to know about Barbados’ new polymer banknotes (part 2)”, 11 November 2022. Link
3. Bank of England, “Banknotes”. Link
4. Bank of England, “Bank of England announces the four animals that will feature on our next series of banknotes”, October 2026. Link
5. Bank of England, “Public asked to help select UK wildlife to appear on new banknote series”, 3 June 2026. Link
6. Bank of England, “King Charles III banknotes enter circulation”, 5 June 2024. Link
7. Bank of England, “Withdrawn banknotes”. Link
8. Bank of England, “Exchanging old banknotes”. Link
9. European Central Bank, “The Europa series: security features” leaflet. Link
10. US Currency Education Program, “Dollars in Detail”. Link
11. Bank of England, “Advice for retailers and businesses”. Link
12. Central Bank of Barbados, “Barbados’ new banknotes will be more accessible for the visually impaired”. Link
13. Reserve Bank of Australia, “Accessibility features”. Link
14. Reuters via Malay Mail, “High-tech cash: Japan launches banknotes with hologram portraits”, 3 July 2024. Link
15. Bank of England, “Testing automatic banknote handling machines”. Link
16. Bank of England, “Banknote Checking Scheme”. Link
17. Bank of England, “The New Fiver”, 2 June 2016. Link
18. Bank of England, “The New Fiver has been issued”, 13 September 2016. Link
19. Royal Mint Museum, “Decimal posters”. Link