All You Need to Know About The New One Pound Coin
The Royal Mint is advising businesses and customers to to prepare for life without the old-style pound coin as it will no longer be legal tender from 16th October.
Its replacement, a new 12-sided pound coin, entered circulation on 28th March 2017 and has gradually phased out the older design.
The New Pound Coin has been dubbed “the most secure coin in the world” thanks to a range of features designed to make it harder to counterfeit.
According to the Royal Mint approximately 1 in 30 old-style one pound coins were fake and the new coin will help reduce the burden and cost that this counterfeit activity has on businesses and the taxpayer.
The new coin features a new portrait of the Queen on the heads side, the fifth portrait in her reign, whilst the tails side has a new design consisting of an English rose, Welsh leek, Scottish thistle and Northern Irish shamrock emerging from one stem within a royal coronet.
Key Features of the new pound coin:
- 12-sided – its distinctive dodecagon shape makes it instantly recognisable, even by touch
- Bimetallic – made of two metals. A gold coloured outer ring made from nickel-brass and a silver coloured inner ring made from nickel-plated alloy
- Latent image – an image like a hologram changes from a ‘£’ symbol to the number ‘1’ when the coin is seen from different angles
- Micro-lettering – very small lettering on the lower inside rim on both sides of the coin. The heads side will show ONE POUND while the tails side will show the year of production
- Milled edges – the new coin has grooves on alternate sides
- Hidden high security feature – a high security feature is built into the coin to protect it from counterfeiting in the future.
As well as looking entirely different from the current £1 coin, the new one is thinner, lighter and slightly larger in diameter, which is why the Royal Mint spent 6 months before launch encouraging businesses to ensure that all equipment will be ready to accept the new dimensions.
The coins were first available from banks and Post Offices in Aberdeen, Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Sittingbourne and York before gradually becoming more widespread.
Phase out
After the coin's launch, an initial 6 month “co-circulation” period allowed companies and equipment to be updated in order to accept both coins.
There are still some left to catch up with Sainsbury's and Tesco acknowledging that some trolleys at smaller stores are not able to accept new coins, whilst TfL is still yet to update around 27 of their paystations on the London Overground.
From 16th October 2017 the old coin will now not be classed as legal tender and customers in possession of the old style coin should take them to the Post Office or a bank to have it changed over.
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