Start of new era: King Charles III to appear on banknotes by mid-2024, confirms Bank of England

New banknotes featuring portrait of newly crowned King Charles III will come into circulation by mid-2024, the Bank of England (BOE) informed on Tuesday.

Reportedly, UK's Central bank will soon reveal the image of the monarch that will be put up on the£5, £10, £20 and £50 notes.

"His Majesty’s portrait will appear on existing designs of all four polymer banknotes(£5, £10, £20 and £50). This will be a continuation of the current polymer series and no additional changes to the banknote designs will be made,"the British central bank said in a statement.

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"New notes will only be printed to replace worn banknotes and to meet any overall increase in demand for banknotes," it clarified.

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The announcement comes nearlythree weeks after Queen Elizabeth II's death. The Queen reigned for 70 years and had her image on the UK notes since 1960 with the £1 note being the first paper currency to have her face.

While King Charles III will come up on the new polymer notes, theBOE has also announced that by September 30, about £6 billion in old £50 notes and more than £5 billion in old £20 notes will no longer be recognised by UK businesses. There are more than 360 million notes in all that will be taken out of circulation.

The decision to transition to polymer notes was made to increase the notes' resistance to damage and fight illegal counterfeiting.

In future, the synthetic notes will also be replaced to enable the distribution of notes carrying the image of King Charles III and to gradually phase out notes bearing the image of the late Queen.

Read more:Britons have less than a week to spend old paper banknotes worth £11 billion

Hence, people only have a small window to make use of their cash. The paper notes will be replaced by polymer £20 and £50 notes which havebeen in circulation for more than two years (since February 2020).

So far,£100 millionworth of the notes have been deposited at Post Office branches. However, with the deadline fast approaching, the Britons worry that there isn't sufficient time to replace the paper notes.

(With inputs from agencies)

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