27th October 2023
Enhanced Security on the Redesigned Banknotes from the Bank of Central African States (BEAC)
The new series of redesigned Central African franc CFA (XAF) banknotes issued by the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) are now seeing wider circulation. All five notes have new visual designs and enhanced security features against counterfeiting, including RAPID®, the micro-optic thread from Crane Currency, on the two highest denominations.
The new series was presented last month during the Integraf Conference held in Bilbao, Spain. Melvyn Mengot, Head of Monetary Emission, for the Bank of Central African States (BEAC), Cameroon, shared the journey of their developing the new BEAC banknote series.
The RAPID micro-optic windowed security thread from Crane Currency was chosen as the most secure banknote security feature for the highest denominations of the series: the 5,000 and 10,000 XAF banknotes. When tilted, the head of an eland antelope changes from light to dark against a high-contrast, moving background. There is a thematic linkage between the RAPID thread and the watermark of the new series, the latter having a trio of eland antelope heads and light-element of the denomination.
RAPID replaced surface-applied, holographic features used on the pervious series (2002-2021), a technology replacement increasingly seen as issuing authorities seek to manage security and costs, e.g., Ghana (2019), Guyana (2019), Kyrgyzstan (2022), Tunisia (2022), to name a few. The two highest denominations also include SPARK Live® gold-to-green and magenta-to-green Truspin® effect.
A closer inspection of the RAPID security threads in the 5000 and 1000 XAF banknotes reveals a showcase of micro-optic precision and design integration. Micro-text reading ‘5000’ and ‘10000’ are vertically integrated into the rightmost numeral of the easily read macro-text on the thread. Under even more powerful magnification, a forensic string of microtext, reading ‘CEMAC’ (for Central African Economic and Monetary Community) followed by the note’s denomination is precisely registered within the stroke widths of each of the numerals. The height of this text is about 25 microns.
The full series consists of the denominations 500, 1000, 2000, 5000 and 10,000 – and replaced the previous series from 2002. The redesigned banknotes celebrate the bank’s 50th anniversary and are used in the six BEAC countries: Central African States of Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon. For the first time, the banknotes represent all four official regional languages: French and Arabic (on the front sides), English and Spanish (on the reverse sides).
Click here for more information about the redesigned BEAC banknotes (in French).
