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New US$100 bill to enter RI shortly
Fresh Benjamin: The US Federeal Reserve associate director for the reserve bank operations and payment systems division, Michael Lambert, tells an audience about the new redesigned US$100 note at an event at @america in Jakarta on Wednesday
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Fresh Benjamin: The US Federeal Reserve associate director for the reserve bank operations and payment systems division, Michael Lambert, tells an audience about the new redesigned US$100 note at an event at @america in Jakarta on Wednesday. Enhanced security elements embedded in the new bill include a 3D security ribbon woven into the paper showing alternating images of a bell and the figure 100 when the bill is tilted. (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama) (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)
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span class="inline inline-none">Fresh Benjamin: The US Federeal Reserve associate director for the reserve bank operations and payment systems division, Michael Lambert, tells an audience about the new redesigned US$100 note at an event at @america in Jakarta on Wednesday. Enhanced security elements embedded in the new bill include a 3D security ribbon woven into the paper showing alternating images of a bell and the figure 100 when the bill is tilted. (JP/R. Berto Wedhatama)
The United States Federal Reserve (Fed) expects the redesigned US$100 bill to start arriving in Indonesia next month.
It is also planning a series of campaigns to acquaint financial institutions and law enforcement agencies with the bill's enhanced security features intended to deter counterfeiting.
The Fed's associate director for reserve bank operations and payment systems division, Michael Lambert, said financial institutions worldwide had begun receiving the new bills as of Oct. 8, when the new bill was launched.
'Any financial institution that has an account with the Federal Reserve, and has placed an order for $100 bills, would be receiving the redesigned bills on that day onwards,' he told The Jakarta Post in an interview on Wednesday, adding older versions of the $100 would remain legal tender.
The Fed did not 'recall, devalue or demonetize the old design' as a result of the issuance of the new bill, he said.
The speed at which the redesigned bills would enter Indonesia would depend on distribution patterns among financial institutions, including banks, he said.
'But I would certainly think that you should begin seeing them in a month or so,' he said.
Bank Indonesia spokesman Difi Johansyah noted that the central bank 'has not seen the new bill yet'.
Lambert said the Fed, in partnership with the Secret Service, would provide training to financial institutions and law enforcement personnel on enhanced security features designed to deter counterfeiting.
'We do not have a counterfeiting problem today, but we do not want one either,' he said.
He added that the US would focus on countries with significant US currency inflows and outflows, in addition to those with 'localized issues' regarding counterfeiting.
'What we generally do in this type of training, versus training to the general public, is go into the details, like the fibers we have on the bill,' said Lambert.
He further said that it was likely that Indonesia would be one of the countries in which such training would be conducted, although the recent US government shutdown had caused a rescheduling of training sessions.
There have been several cases of counterfeiting in Indonesia.
In May, the police were called to investigate a case in which two plastic bags filled with 24,000 counterfeit $100 bills were found in a hotel room in East Jakarta.
Meanwhile, foreign exchange reserves have gone up by a cumulative $3 billion to $95.7 billion between June and the end of last month.
Lambert said the Fed estimated that as much as two-thirds of the $100 bills in circulation were held outside the US, with Asia being a 'very large repository of $100 bills'.
'We have almost 9 billion [older version] $100 bills in circulation but of course, we do not expect to replace all of them at one time,' he said, adding that in this initial issuance, the Reserve had stockpiled 3.6 billion of the redesigned bills.
He added that under the 'accelerated rollover' system, whereby the Reserve would destroy all older versions of the bill, it expected to have replaced up to 90 percent of all circulating $100 bills within approximately five years.
He further noted that the Reserve had ordered another batch of 2.5 billion redesigned bills for next year's issuance.
