This from Bank of Canada:
Through the Currency Department’s new Information
Management Strategy, a bank note can now be tracked
through every stage of its life cycle—from development
to destruction. This pioneering approach to bank
note analytics received the 2015 award for “Best Bank
Note Processing Innovation” from the International
Association of Currency Affairs.
I believe a year or so ago there was post by someone who had heard a similar thing at a bank note conference in Vancouver. I recently found out that one of the branches of a large bank has totally been out of cash handling. The cash dispensing machines inside the branch are stocked by armored car companies. The machines seem to communicate in real-time about the bank notes going in and out of the machine. If the staff gets a note that is not accepted by the machine they just put it in a slot that is part of the machine. They do the same thing with mutilated notes including the paper notes from previous series.
The only time the staff handle cash is if they are either taking it out of the machine or depositing it into the machine or if they are dealing with a special cash order for any customers that cannot be handled through the machine.
The technology exists presently for the Bank of Canada to keep an image of every single note that goes into circulation. They have been using a similar technology since the introduction of 5's and 10's in 2013.
