Newly-designed $100 bill to finally reach the public Tuesday

AFP Photo / Brendan Smialowski

The newly-designed $100 bill with strengthened authentication safeguards will go public on Tuesday, the bill’s first redesign since 1996 and two years behind schedule.

Benjamin Franklin’s image on the $100 bill stays the same, but other measures taken in the redesign will make verification easier and counterfeiting tougher.

The new features - from left to right when looking at Franklin on the note - include an embedded security thread that runs vertically in the bill and is engraved with “USA” and “100”; a blue, 3-D security ribbon in which a Liberty Bell will turn to a “100” when tilted back and will move up and down if tilted side-to-side; color-changing ink that turns another Liberty Bell from copper to green when the bill is tilted; and a quill alongside imprinted phrases from the Declaration of Independence. 

In addition, the bill will feature “raised printing” throughout its surface.

The new bill was scheduled for release to the public in 2011, but the Federal Reserve pushed the date back given aspects of the new security features were causing the bills to crease during printing, leaving blank spaces on the notes.

In August the Bureau of Engraving and Printing reported that 30 million of the new $100 bills were improperly printed, citing a taxpayer cost of $3.79 million to correct.

The $100 bill is the second most common US bill in circulation. As of Dec. 31, 2012, the top three in circulation were $1 bills (10.3bn), $100 bills (8.6bn) and $20 bills (7.4bn). Over 75 percent of the around $1tn of currency in circulation is in $100 bills, CNN reported.

Older designs of the $100 note will stay in circulation, though any new notes given to banks by the Federal Reserve will feature the new design.

The new note’s anti-counterfeit tech will not come cheap, however. Each new $100 bill will cost 8 cents to produce, while the proposed budget for printing will be 7 percent higher than the year prior. According to the Federal Reserve that increase is “primarily attributable to a higher volume of more-expensive new-design $100 notes.”