How Current Money Changed From Paper To Plastic

How did our current paper money change to plastic or what is better known as polymer notes?

I will not go into details of this right now. This is just a short introduction to prepare you for the next major topic we will be exploring in the next couple of days.

We all know that paper money can be very fragile! It gets torn, wet and soggy, old and dirty and in some countries you really don't want to know where the paper money has been before it got thrust into your hands as a legal tender.

This situation made the shelf life of the banknotes quite short and it became obvious that something needed to be done about it.

Over the years different materials apart from paper have been used in different countries as banknotes, including leather in Russia and Germany, wood in Canada, and silk and other fibers in USA, Germany, China and Turkestan.

Polymer notes are the modern technological answer to the problems of paper money, that is durability and counterfeiting issues. Only 1.5 percent of the world currently use these notes.
We shall be spending the next couple of days exploring why polymer notes have failed to capture the hearts of nations as paper money has.