Bank of England picks Winston Churchill for plastic notes

The Bank of England is to issue plastic notes for the first time in its history, it announced today.
The new 5 pounds (USD 8.2, 6.0 euro) note made of polymer will be issued in 2016 and feature World War II prime minister Winston Churchill, Britain's central bank said.
A polymer 10 pounds note featuring novelist Jane Austen will follow around a year later.
More than 25 other countries have flexible polymer banknotes, with at least seven using only plastic notes.
Sterling is the first of the world's major currencies -- ahead of the US dollar, the euro, the Japanese yen and the Swiss franc -- to switch to polymer.

BoE notes are currently made from cotton paper but a three-year study found that polymer notes stayed cleaner for longer, were more difficult to counterfeit and lasted at least 2.5 times longer.

"Ensuring trust and confidence in money is at the heart of what central banks do. Polymer notes are the next step in the evolution of banknote design to meet that objective," BoE governor Mark Carney added in the statement.
Though slightly smaller, the new notes will retain a similar layout, featuring a 1990 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II, and a historical figure on the reverse.
The BoE first began issuing handwritten notes shortly after it was established in 1694. The first fully-printed notes appeared in 1853.

Last year, the central bank had 2.9 billion notes in circulation, with a face value exceeding 52 billion pounds.
The United Kingdom's first polymer banknote was a commemorative 5 pounds note to mark the year 2000, issued by Northern Ireland's Northern Bank.