Check if an invoice is fake

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In Europe there are 18 countries that use a common currency: the Euro. Unfortunately and quite often, we can find that a the ticket is fake of this current coin. It usually happens with the most used bills such as the 5, 10, 20 and 50, but there are also coin cases or some large bills.

As indicated by the European central bank, who is the one who mints and prints the money of our community, they exist in circulation throughout Europe around 670,000 counterfeits. How to prevent one of those bills from reaching our hands? It cannot, unless we are always aware of the money they give us in cash change or in any other way. What we can control is the way detect when a bill is counterfeit.

Una vez que llega un billete a nuestras manos es falso y lo hemos identificado, lo lógico y ético es sacarlo de circulación. Si el boleto nos es entregado en una línea de pago en un supermercado u otro establecimiento, debemos negarnos a recogerlo y, desde luego, instar a que lo retiren para que ningún otro client or Username lo reciba.

How can we detect if a bill is counterfeit?

Imagine that you are shopping at the supermarket or you have finished filling your car tank with fuel, or in any other establishment and that already at the cash register or about to pay, the banknote detector tells you that yours, with a value of 50 euros, it is false! What a shame! but how is it feasible? How is it that it is false, but if it is the same as the others?

Most of us instead of feeling cheated we feel guilty as if we had created that false bill ourselves, at home, in the secret of the night, when everyone sleeps. We look for a thousand excuses to excuse that we have a banknote that is not legal, instead of understanding that someone else has made the decision to cheat by creating it and disseminating it together with hundreds more throughout Europe.

Now, how can we avoid putting a fake invoice in our purse or wallet? The check should be taken as a custom, in this way, when we receive change tickets at the cash register or even from an ATM or when in our business we receive a cash payment, we must review them and the correct form is first of all visual and tactile.

We are going to put into practice the steps that the ECB itself recommends, to get used to checking the banknotes periodically, so that this custom makes us less experts and we can more or less quickly distinguish if the banknotes are suspicious, which at least is already one step.

Review your bills, use them for practice, get them out of your wallet. Observe and touch them. Take your time. Remember: you must to touch, have to Look and you must to turn The entrance.

Let's touch the bills

All banknotes printed by the ECB have relief, in such a way that when you pass your finger over them, it is extremely easy to notice it. They are not thin like normal paper, but have a distinctive and unmistakable rough touch. This one usually emboss we can detect it in:

• The main image of the ticket.
• In the most prominent letters of the banknote
• As well as in the figure of the value of the ticket.

If your banknote has these three types of relief, the banknote It is not false. But this is just one of the things to pay attention to. There is more.

While having a rough feel, make sure your bill has Soft touch, that is to say, hard or taut to the touch, which does not look like a "soft" paper to the touch.

From time to time, the ECB issues series of new banknotes and, in this circumstance, the new series called Europe Series, is designed with two bands with relief on the front of the banknote on the left and right.

You have to get used to touching the bills, so that when we touch them, by default and almost without realizing it, we notice if they are false or not.

Let's take a good look at the inputs.

The next step to establish if our invoice is false or not, is to look and look good. We are going to train our eyes to establish the falsity or not of our money on paper.

How can we see at a glance that the invoice is correct? Putting it in the light, that is, approaching a light source (a window, a lamp, etc.) and checking what we see through it.

We are going to see three prominent terms that will tell us if our invoice is false or not: filigree or white part, the security thread and the coincidence reason.

THE WATER BRAND

You must look to the left of the ticket, where there is a white part What is called filigree and look at this:

• You should see an unclear image, like blur from a window.
• In the same white part, the value of the ticket must also appear
• In the new banknotes with a value of 5 euros, you can also see the image of Europe, which is a famous character from Greek mythology.

THE SECURITY THREAD

The banknotes incorporate a security system known as «security thread”. It is located right in the middle of the bill, vertically (on the banknotes of the first series) and can be detected on both sides of the banknote by simply passing your fingernail over this part of the banknote. In the case of banknotes Europe Series, the security thread is also located in the middle of the bill, but it does not occupy the entire verticality of the bill, but only 1/3.

The security thread should read:

• The value of the ticket
• The word "euro«
• The euro symbol appears in the new series: €

REASON FOR COINCIDENCE

The matching ratio is found on the left side of the bill, in the obverse (the back) and on the right side of the back (or front). Also looking at the light, we have to see the figure with the value of the ticket.

Let's spin the ticket

The next way to check if the bills we have in our wallet or box are fake is to look at the back of the invoice and verify certain indications that we give below, to detect falsehoods.

• On the right side there is a silver band where the value of the banknote, or the name or the euro symbol (€) must appear.
• In the same band, look closely and see if the europe portrait, which is a character belonging to Greek mythology.
• If the ticket is 5 euros and it is one of the new ones, the Europe Series, you can see in the part lower of left (always looking at the banknote from its obverse, that is, the obverse) figure of the ticket shiny reflecting a greenish or bluish color.

Europe Series

We have talked about the Europa Series, which is a series launched by the ECB with very advanced security measures, exactly to prevent counterfeiting.

But how do I know what a Europa Series ticket is? Well, we will analyze each of the banknotes in this series: 5, 10 and 20 euros.

• 5 Euro bill: at the bottom center the word Euro appears in three languages: Latin (Euro), Greek (EypO) and Cyrillic (Ebpo). On the right side, the silver line disappears and a color line where they appear among others, the europe portrait, from Greek mythology and the number of the value of the banknote, a 5. In the upper left part where the number 5 and the European flag appeared, now only the european flag appears and below a signature.
  The large number 5 that was previously in the middle, now appears more to the left.
  An easier way to find out is date. In the first series, the year appears. 2002 and the year appears in the Europa series 2013.
• 10 and 20 euro ticket: in both cases the same happens as with 5, and at the same time they are distinguished by the date that appears on the ticket.

To take precautions

It does not consist of becoming paranoid and thinking that each bill is false, but if we get used to the touch and the guidelines given previously, a single glance will be enough to detect it.

In general, we do not pay too much attention to the tickets with which we pay or with which they pay us or give us change, but it is important to educate the touch and the eye so as not to end up with one of these fictitious bills.

No se sienta mal por recibir una o más facturas y sospeche mientras la revisamos para verificar que be falsa. Recuerda que si te lo guardas en el bolsillo o en el monedero, el problema ahora será tuyo y si en otro establecimiento lo detectan como falso, el que perderá ese dinero serás tú.

Con estas precauciones, no solo evitaremos un momento embarazoso al momento de pagar, sino que además evitaremos que sigan en circulación y engañen a otras persons que quizá no puedan verificar su legalidad, como las personas mayores.