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Japan’s new banknotes might have come too late
An army of vending machines is defying the drive to cashlessness but recalibrating them will be expensive.
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The new Japanese banknotes will have an extensive suite of updated anti-counterfeiting features.
PHOTO: AFP
Leo Lewis
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Next week, Japan will introduce three new banknotes for the first time in 20 years, adorning them with a heavyweight trio from the stratospheres of science, higher education and raw, unbridled capitalism.
But this is no straightforward or low-cost switch. It was never going to be in a country that has 3.9 million cash-ingesting vending and ticketing machines, acute labour shortages and government targets for pushing the country towards cashlessness. The redesigned notes could either drive inflation or suppress it and few seem sure which will happen.
