Ah dear. We celebrated this ~kooky~ new $5 note with its very chic transparent strip, but it turns out its actually causing some pretty major problems.
It’s being reported that automated note readers at shops, self-serve checkouts in supermarkets, vending machines and pokies are all spitting the cash straight back out.
The clear strip is actually causing machines to think that the middle of the note is the end, so it rejects it as legal tender.
…uh oh.
“The note reader starts to read the note and sees the clear strip, it identifies that as the end of the note and of course it can’t recognise it, so it spits it back out,” Nick Aronis, president of the National Vending Association.
Woolworths has apparently had to scramble to fix the issue. They’ve had to recalibrate and update the firmware of over 100,000 machines, just so it will recognise the note. This process has come at a cost of – WAIT FOR IT – 20 million dollars.
It took NSW‘s Opal card top-up stations three weeks to accept the note, and K-Mart, TAB betting terminals, and pokies apparently all still reject the note.
In response, Choice consumer advocacy group spokesperson Erin Turner has said there’s no excuse – companies have known of the $5 note update for the past year, and therefore had oodles of time to update their machines.
“This clearly seems to be a failure of planning and there is no reason why they shouldn’t be accepting the new $5 note,” Ms Turner said.
“They need to get their act together and fix it as quickly as possible.”
But, Aronis says that “the cost to the industry is massive.”
ICYMI, the new $5 includes the weird clear bit as a matter of security and to stop counterfeiting, plus there are raised dots on it so blind people can determine the value of the note.
It came into circulation on September 1, to much excited media fanfare.
Source: Daily Tele.
