Currency in colour: a visual guide to 157 banknotes around the world
The colour of currency
Whilst experts predict that by the end of the decade less than one in ten payments will involve cash, and the current coronavirus crisis has seen a sharp halt to consumers paying with physical money, chances are with 3.9 billion UK banknotes in circulation alone, it’ll be a long time before we put our wallets/purses away for good.
Most of us probably don’t pay much attention to the colourways and designs of banknotes but there has been extensive conversation in the media over the last few years about UK banknotes going ‘plastic’ and also debate over who what sorts of people should feature as a banknote character.
This debate is not unique to the UK, and so here at money.co.uk we wanted to understand the DNA of individual currencies, more specifically their banknotes, and how they differ around the world.
As part of our study, we analysed 157 currencies in circulation, taking note of everything from their dominant colours, the profession of the feature figure, gender representation and the appearance of any buildings or animals. This in turn helped us to determine the most common and rarest features of banknotes worldwide.
The colour of currency map
Arguably the most internationally recognised currency colour, the green ink used to print US Dollar banknotes was originally chosen to prevent photographic knockoffs in the 1860s. But how do the chosen colours of currencies differ around the world?
To ascertain the dominant colour of each currency and provide a fair comparison, we analysed the most popular note in each country, or the denomination closest to a £20 note (the most widely circulated note in the UK) where circulation figures weren’t available.
Explore our interactive map below to discover the most dominant colour of each currencies’ banknotes, as well as the most commonly featured components of all their notes combined.