Old peso bills going out of circulation

MANILA, Philippines–As the new year kicks in, the central bank will start phasing out all peso bills bearing old designs, regulators announced this week.

Starting January 2015, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) will begin the yearlong “demonitization” process for all old peso bills with denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500 and 1,000.

These include bills still accepted as legal tender but have been out of production for years such as the green Emilio Aguinaldo five-peso bill and the brown 10-peso bill that has Andres Bonifacio and Apolinario Mabini on it. Both bills were replaced with coins.

Old peso bills, which are still called New Design Series (NDS) notes, will be replaced with New Generation Currency (NGC) banknotes that were released to the public in 2010.

NDS notes were introduced in 1985. Minor changes were made to the designs, but NDS notes have maintained the same look they had three decades after they were released.

By the end of 2015, NDS notes will cease to be legal tender, the BSP said. The public, however, may still have these old notes replaced with NGC notes until the end of 2016.

The move to replace all old peso bills with NGC currencies is part of the BSP’s efforts to ensure the integrity of physical money. NGC notes are manufactured with additional security features that make them less susceptible to counterfeiting. The new bills are also more durable. Lower denominations even have antibacterial properties that make them more resistant to wear and tear.

Local peso bills are still manufactured using paper and other natural fibers, despite the shift of other jurisdictions to plastic notes.

Plastic notes, the BSP said, are much more expensive to produce and fade easier. Plastic money also does not hold up well to being folded several times, making it unsuitable for countries like the Philippines where paper money is often crumpled and placed in pockets.