The Philippines Central Bank’s 1,000-piso note was overwhelmingly named winner of the 2022 Banknote of the Year Award by the International Bank Note Society.

About 100 new bank notes were released worldwide during 2022, but only 19 were deemed of sufficiently new design to be nominated by the members of the IBNS for the competition. Nominations closed on Jan. 31 of this year and the Philippine issue was the prohibitive favorite from the start of voting.

Runners-up were Northern Ireland’s (Ulster Bank) £50 bill with flora and fauna, and the Bank of Scotland’s £100 pound note featuring Sir Walter Scott and Dr. Flora Murray. Also in the top six vote getters were Algeria’s 2,000-dinar note showing the martyr’s memorial and minaret; the Barbados $50 note portraying former prime minister Errol Barrow; and Egypt’s 10-pound note illustrating mosque with pyramid and ancient queen. All six are printed on polymer rather than paper.

The IBNS describes the blue Philippines note as combining an endangered species with an environmental motif. The face of the note features two Philippines symbols, the endangered Philippine eagle and the holographic sampaguita, the national flower. The back is unchanged from the previous 1,000-piso issue with Tubbataha Reefs Natural Park, a map, and a large South Sea pearl in the center.

The 1,000-piso note, equivalent to about $18 U.S., was printed by the Reserve Bank of Australia and its wholly owned subsidiary Note Printing Australia. Polymer represents a dramatic shift from the cotton and abaca material previously used on Philippine currency.

The Banknote of the Year is as much a competition among printers as among countries. De La Rue took the honors for the most entries with five, followed by Perum Peruri, Indonesia’s money-printing public corporation, with two.The remaining printers were each responsible for one entrant: Crane Currency, Giesecke & Devrient, Hong Kong Note Printing Limited, Note Printing Australia, Oberthur, Oumolat Security Printing, Bank of Algeria, Banknote Factory of the National Bank of Kazakhstan, Central Bank of Egypt, and Pakistan Security Printing Corporation.

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