Old peso series in circulation for the last 30 years, says BSP

AUTHORITIES have been slowly phasing out banknotes with old designs and the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) is confident all bills in circulation will have the new look of Philippine money by the end of next year.

Starting in 2016, paper bills with old designs—referred to as the New Design Series (NDS) notes that were introduced in 1985—will no longer be accepted for normal transactions.

However, the BSP has allowed banks to accept and replace old notes until the end of next year.

“After a five-year period, it’s about time the old bills were demonetized so we only have one set in circulation,” said BSP Deputy Governor Diwa C. Guinigundo.

Guinigundo said the change in the look of the country’s paper bills was necessary for safety considerations.

“Our old series has been in circulation for the last 30 years. Over that period, we’ve seen how people have perfected counterfeiting so we introduced new features in the new generation banknotes,” Guinigundo said.

These security features were “embedded” into the new designs, he said, making them more difficult to copy.

“We had about 19 counterfeit bills per million. That’s gone down to about 11 so we’re seeing some improvements,” he said.