A currency-counting machine is a machine that counts money—either stacks of

banknote A banknote—also called a bill (North American English), paper money, or simply a note—is a type of negotiable promissory note, made by a bank or other licensed authority, payable to the bearer on demand. Banknotes were originally issued ...

s or loose collections of

coin A coin is a small, flat (usually depending on the country or value), round piece of metal or plastic used primarily as a medium of exchange or legal tender. They are standardized in weight, and produced in large quantities at a mint in order t ...

s. Counters may be purely mechanical or use electronic components. The machines typically provide a total count of all money, or count off specific batch sizes for wrapping and storage. Currency counters are commonly used in

vending machines A vending machine is an automated machine that provides items such as snacks, beverages, cigarettes, and lottery tickets to consumers after cash, a credit card, or other forms of payment are inserted into the machine or otherwise made. The fir ...

to determine what amount of money has been deposited by customers. In some modern

automated teller machine An automated teller machine (ATM) or cash machine (in British English) is an electronic telecommunications device that enables customers of financial institutions to perform financial transactions, such as cash withdrawals, deposits, fun ...

s, currency counters allow for

cash In economics, cash is money in the physical form of currency, such as banknotes and coins. In bookkeeping and financial accounting, cash is current assets comprising currency or currency equivalents that can be accessed immediately or near-im ...

deposits without

envelope An envelope is a common packaging item, usually made of thin, flat material. It is designed to contain a flat object, such as a letter or card. Traditional envelopes are made from sheets of paper cut to one of three shapes: a rhombus, a sh ...

s, since they can identify which notes have been inserted instead of just how many. The user is given the chance to review the automatic counter's idea of the quantity and kinds of the inserted banknotes before the deposit is complete.

Banknote-only counters

Basic

banknote counter A banknote counter or bill counter is a device designed primarily to accurately count a quantity of banknotes. Additionally, a banknote counter may sort banknotes into batches and check for damaged or counterfeit notes. History The first automa ...

s provide a total count of the notes in the supply hopper. More advanced counters can identify different denominations to provide a total currency value of mixed banknotes, including those that are upside down. Some banknote counters can also detect counterfeit notes either magnetically and/or using

blacklight A blacklight, also called a UV-A light, Wood's lamp, or ultraviolet light, is a lamp that emits long-wave (UV-A) ultraviolet light and very little visible light. One type of lamp has a violet filter material, either on the bulb or in a sepa ...

. Blacklight (UV) based detectors exploit the fact that in many countries, real banknotes have fluorescent symbols on them that only show under a black light. Also, the paper used for printing money does not contain any of the brightening agents which make commercially available papers fluoresce under black light. Both features make counterfeit notes both easier to detect and more difficult to successfully produce. There are mainly two types of design used by counters to load and count the notes: back and top loading styles. On a back-loading machine, notes are fed into the hopper from the back of the machine. This feeding design makes the machine more cost-efficient, but the notes need to be stacked neatly to avoid jamming, and the maximum size of the stack is reduced. On a top-loading machine, notes are fed into the hopper from the front of the machine. This feeding design makes the machine more costly, but feeding notes is easier, and it is possible to feed notes continuously. A stack of notes are placed in a compartment of the machine, and then one note at a time is mechanically pulled through the machine. By counting the number of times a beam of light is interrupted, the machine can count the notes. By comparing an image of each denomination to

pattern recognition Pattern recognition is the automated recognition of patterns and regularities in data. It has applications in statistical data analysis, signal processing, image analysis, information retrieval, bioinformatics, data compression, computer graphics ...

criteria, the machine can ascertain denominations and identify counterfeits.

Banknote and coin counters

Counting scales that are able to count batches of notes or of coins without having to process them individually, were introduced in Great Britain in 1980 and are now widely used by banks, retailers and food service outlets in many parts of the world. They are faster and more versatile than the traditional notes-only & coins-only equipment, but cannot detect counterfeits.

Coin sorter

A coin sorter is a device which sorts a random collection of coins into separate bins or tubes for various denominations. Coin sorters are typically specific to the currency of certain countries due to different currencies often issuing similarly sized coins of different value. While some sorters make no attempt at counting, most sorters are armed with a screen displaying the number or the value of the coins that passed through the machine.

Coin counter

The phrase ''coin counter'' may refer to a device which both sorts and counts coins at the same time, or only counts presorted coins that are all the same size. A typical counter of presorted coins uses a bowl with flat spinning disc at the bottom to distribute coins around the bowl perimeter. An opening in the edge of the bowl is only wide enough to accept one coin at a time. Coins either pass through a light-beam counter, or are pushed through a spring-loaded cam that only accepts one coin at a time. Good standard for coin counter's counting speed is 300 coins per minute.

First Counting Machines

De La Rue were marketing their first bank note counting machine in 1957. Kokuei were manufacturing a coin counter in Japan in 1952. These companies continued to manufacture a wide variety of cash handling equipment. In 1971, Kokuei company name was changed to Glory. In 2008, De La Rue Cash Systems was renamed Talaris. In 2013, Glory acquired Talaris. There are now a number of manufacturers of coin and bank note counters and sorters as well as other devices to make cash handling easier.

References

"Counts and Wraps Coins Quickly and Easily"
'' Popular Science'', February 1919, page 68 (via

Google Books Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...

)

Patents

External links

{{Portal, Money
''CoinCounterDatabase wiki — United States''
Banking technology