Welcome to a virtual journey through the world of bank notes.

'Bank notes are the business cards of a country'

We all use money regularly in our everyday life, no matter if it's coins, bank notes, cheques or credit cards. We recognize the value of the coins and the bank notes by their sizes, their colours and the numbers and motifs printed (or minted) on them. But we often hardly know anything about the stories behind these motifs.
Especially bank notes are more than just a piece of paper to pay our bills with. They are a small pieces of art telling us a lot about the history, the politics, the culture and the identity of the country they belong to. Some countries like Great Britain or Thailand show portraits of their current rulers on their notes, while the new Danish series (2009) and the Euro notes have bridges on one side of their notes. Other countries like Egypt use pictures of famous sites on their notes or animals as South Africa does. But the most common motifs are still portraits of famous personalities.

What this website wants to be and what not:

It is the aim of this website to show this variety, the beauty and the development of world paper money and to provide background information about the presented motifs and - if available - interesting stories about some special notes.

• You'll find an overview of current and former currencies, sorted by continent and country.

• You'll find a short of the geographical and political situation of each country, the notes of which are displayed on this site

• You'll find short biographies of many personalities depicted on bank notes shown on this site

• You'll find scan of bank notes as well as some photographies of bank notes under UV light

• You'll be informed about the names and titles of the signatories, if known.

This website shall not be seen as a bank notes catalog - even it uses and comments the numbering system of the Standard Catalog of World Paper Money (SCWPM). Moreover it shall not be regarded as a presentation of a private collection because it is based solely on contributions (scans and information) from friends, bank note collectors, bank note dealers, visitors and even from Central Banks.

Legal restrictions concerning the reproduction of banknotes:

The pictures of bank notes on this page are created according to the preconditions of the European Central Bank and thus comply with similar regulations from other leading National banks as well. Every note displayed here has a low resolution of max. 72 dpi and bears the overprint "SPECIMEN" in black letters, covering a significant part (more than 50%) of the length and height of the bank note. This does not apply to bank notes issed more than 30 years ago or replaced by others during a monetary reform, which took place at least 5 years ago. It is assumed that these notes are not in public use anymore.

Copyright:

The copyright of any bank note shown here is with the respective issuing authority, National Bank or Central Bank.
Any picture on this page (including flags and maps) may be used by anybody under the following preconditions:

- The pictures are not used to anyone's disadvantage
- The pictures are only for personal use and are published only on private homepages
- The pictures are used to support people's interest in paper money
- The contents of this page are used for educational purposes
- A reference to this page would be highly appreciated, but it is not indispensable