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Trade News Archive 2009 January February March April
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9th April 2009
One in 20 £1 coins 'a fake'
Retailers have been warned about the dangers of fake currency, after a BBC report claimed that the number of counterfeit pound coins in circulation is twice as high as previously estimated.
Official figures from the Royal Mint suggested that around 2.5 per cent of the coins are not legitimate, but a coin testing firm told the news agency that the real proportion is closer to five per cent, or one in 20.
Willings, a firm that creates machines to check coins for retailers and other businesses, estimated that there could be as many as 73 million fake coins in circulation today.
The firm's Andy Brown suggested that the problem with identifying fake pound coins is that it is in no one's interest to do so.
"Provided the coins are just being accepted and passed through the system, nobody cares," he said. "It's only when people start rejecting [them] that people come to us."
Former Queen's Assay Master Robert Matthews added that the Royal Mint is eager to play down the problem; for fear that public confidence in coins could be undermined.
With a recent study by the British Retail Consortium indicating that traders have benefited from an influx in cash sales during the recession, such a decline in confidence could be all-the-more damaging for retailers during a difficult time.
(c) 2009
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