Volume of damaged notes withdrawn from circulation increases
Frequency of official fitness tests tends to have bearing on removals
Central banks withdrew a higher average volume of damaged banknotes from circulation in the past year than they reported in the previous benchmark, data from the Currency Benchmarks 2026 shows.
Respondents removed an average of 166.1 million units of mutilated banknotes from circulation last year. The volume is 20% higher than the average 137.9 million units Central Banking analysed for a slightly varied sample in the 2024 benchmark.
Volumes ranged from 6,424 in a high income jurisdiction in
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