Technology Guide about Banknote Counting/Sorting Machine

A banknote counter (or bill counter) is a device designed primarily to accurately count a quantity of banknotes. Additionally, a banknote counter may sort banknotes into batches and check damaged or counterfeit notes.

The counter has many sensors to accurate analyze the banknote. Thus, the accurate counting mainly depends on the sensor technology of the machine. See Sensors for more details.

The counter can have not only ONE output pocket (as seen below), but also MULTI output pockets. As the number of output pockets increase, more applications can be possible. See why multi pocket? for more details.

Old and cheap Banknote counters (as seen above) can count only pieces of the banknotes. Because it detects counterfeit in very simple way (like just checking existence/absence of magnetic material or UV material), it cannot handle when new counterfeits or new banknotes are introduced in. It means that it cannot separate different denominations and sophisticated counterfeits. Nowadays high-end banknote counters can analyze banknote image and add up the value of the banknotes and even separate clean and dirty banknote. All those functionalities can be upgraded when new counterfeit and new denominations are introduced and new currencies need to be installed.

See Upgrade for details.

See Fitness Sorting Criteria for details.

Central banks have been producing, circulating and destroying banknotes. Due to the extremely large volume of circulating banknotes, central banks should use special machine like the following picture.

Though the gigantic machine performs very well and efficient. It had many disadvantages. First, because only central banks have such expensive big machine, banknotes should be moved to central banks. It causes big transportation cost, because cash transportation needs the heavy armor vehicles and armored personnel.

Now, cash handling is being decentralized to remove cash transportation cost and risks, thanks to the introduction of high performance multi pocket sorters which is small enough to put on the desktop.