On March 8, 2018, International Women’s Day, bank note history was made as the design of Canada’s upcoming $10 bill, featuring human rights icon Viola Desmond, was unveiled to Canadians.
This new $10 bill will enter circulation late this year. The first vertically-oriented note to be issued by the Bank of Canada, it will be rolled out gradually and will circulate alongside the other $10 bills.
Business owners of bank note handling equipment (such as ABMs, vending machines, self-serve checkouts or cash counters) are encouraged to contact their equipment suppliers with questions about machine compatibility.
The vertical orientation allows for a larger portrait of Viola Desmond, a successful Black Nova Scotia businesswoman who defiantly refused to leave a whites-only area of a movie theatre in 1946, and whose court case was one of the first known legal challenges against racial segregation brought by a Black woman in Canada.
The next note to be issued will be the $5, to be released a few years after this new $10, while the subsequent note will follow a few years later. This allows the Bank to integrate the latest security features each time a new bank note is issued, so Canadians can continue to use their bank notes with confidence.
Meanwhile, the upcoming $10 note has some enhanced security features compared with the notes in the current series, and is supported by a suite of accessibility features to help blind and partially-sighted Canadians determine the denomination with confidence. As Canada’s new regularly circulating $10 bank note, it will be produced for years to come.
“Our bank notes are designed not only to be a secure and durable means of payment, but also to be works of art that tell the stories of Canada. This new $10 fits that bill,” said Bank of Canada Governor Stephen S. Poloz at the unveiling event.
Visit www.bankofcanada.ca/vertical10 to learn more about the security features and design of Canada’s new $10 bank note.
For free, downloadable materials to help businesses train their staff to recognize genuine Canadian bank notes and avoid counterfeits, visit www.bankofcanada.ca/retailers.