Mexico’s 100 Peso Wins IBNS Banknote of the Year Award

Mexico’s new 100 peso banknote has beaten more than 100 other candidates to win the prestigious Banknote of the Year Award for 2020, awarded by the International Bank Note Society (IBNS).

Banco de México was both the printer and issuer of the award-winning note. The vertical format note, produced on CCL Secure’s GUARDIAN™ polymer, maintains the themes of history and evolution of the Mexican nation on the front, and the wealth of its natural environment on the reverse that are being applied to all notes in the G series (the 200, 500 and 1,000 denominations of which have also been issued).

The 17th century novo-Hispanic writer and poet Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz appears on the front, while the theme on the reverse is the temperate forest ecosystem, represented by the pine, oak and oymel trees of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve, recognised as a natural world heritage site by UNESCO.

The principal overt security features are the denomination numeral printed in SPARK® Live with a gold-to-green colour shift and Openform visual effects, and a clear window with colour shifting inks and an embossed 100.

GUARDIAN will also be used for the new 20 and 50 peso notes (as it is on the current F series notes). Once the G series of notes is complete, the Bank estimates that polymer will be used in around 2 billion notes in circulation in the country, representing around 30% of the total volume of notes in circulation.

From all significant newly designed and widely circulated banknotes released in 2020, the 2,000 members of IBNS nominated notes from 22 different countries, drawn from five continents – Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and South America – as well as Central America, three island nations, and the Middle East.

This was the first time a Mexican note has won the award. Second place went to the Royal Bank of Scotland’s new £20 note. There was a virtual tie for third place between Northern Ireland’s Ulster Bank £20 note, the Bahamian $5, and Fiji’s $50 commemorative note.