BoG commences circulation of upgraded Ghana cedi notes today

The Bank of Ghana will make available the upgraded banknotes to the public from today, Monday, May 6, 2019.

The governor of the Bank of Ghana, Dr. Ernest Addison, on April, 18, issued a statement on the introduction of upgraded bank notes.

“The Bank of Ghana will issue upgraded banknotes into circulation on May6, 2019. The upgraded banknotes will have enhanced security features in line with evolving changes in the technological landscape. The upgraded bank notes also come with improved durability and machine readability”, the statement said.

The banknotes which have seen an upgrade are the One, Five, Ten, Two and Fifty Cedis notes.

The features on the upgraded banknotes are enhanced for security purposes and to introduce modern features to the currency, in line with the changing technological landscape.

The GH₵10 note will have the image of the cowrie shell, the GH₵20 will have the image of a star and the GH₵50 note will show a cocoa pod on it. Each of these images will be a color-changing spark live. The color of this feature also changes from gold to green when tilted.

There has also been introduced, a new enhanced security thread (RAPID) which is a shiny broken line with movement that runs through the banknote from top to bottom.

Also, the image of Tetteh Quarshie with a cocoa pod, present in the existing banknotes has been made more noticeable in the plain star area of the banknote. The denomination value will be seen in the watermark area.

The upgraded banknotes will also show an enhanced iridescent band at the back of the banknote that runs from top to bottom.

Principal design elements, such as the Big Six portrait, the denominational colors, the dimensions of the various denominations and other principal and background images remain unchanged in the upgraded banknotes.

The upgraded banknotes will co-circulate with the existing ones.