The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has released security features to help identify fake new naira notes in a bid to protect Nigerians from falling victim of counterfeiters.
Since the apex bank released the redesigned naira notes in the denominations of N200, N500 and N1,000, fake notes of the new N1,000 notes have been reported to be circulating in the economy.
In a recent viral video, a man disclosed that his wife who is a POS vendor received a counterfeit of the newly redesigned N1,000 naira note.
“Fake money is in town now, people should be very careful. My wife who is into POS, someone gave the fake N1,000 naira note to her and we don’t know who gave her the money, we later discovered that it is fake money,” he wrote.
He therefore went ahead to place the fake note side by side with the original one to educate Nigerians on how to differentiate the fake from the original.
The CBN has said that the banknotes are protected by some security features to enable the easy recognition of genuine notes.
According to CBN’s template, the Security features to look out for are the following:
- Intaglio: This is when the image on the naira note is incised into a surface, and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink.
- Portrait watermark: A watermark is a logo, piece of text, or signature superimposed onto a photograph. Watermarks are typically transparent, so those viewing the image can still admire it. The new naira notes’ watermark is in portrait form, as seen in the illustrations.
- Optically Viable Ink (OVI): The light reflects off OVI security ink when viewed at an angle. The light makes the ink’s colour appear different compared to looking at it straight. In many use cases, OVI may be transparent when viewed directly but takes on colour when viewed at an angle. For instance, the OVI in the new naira notes changes from blue to green with a change in the view angle.
- Kinegram: This is one of the easiest ways to identify counterfeit notes. It provides quality identification and security features for the new naira notes. The Kinegram is made of the You’ll see an image of the Nigerian Coat of Arms in the original new N1000 note.
- Iridescent band: A symbol at the top of the new N1000 note changes when seen from different angles.
- Engraved portrait: The picture of Nnamdi Azikiwe in the new N500 note is being carved into a surface.
The portrait is painted or sketched on the right side to enable you to identify the original.
See the details and position of the security features as highlighted in the images below:
