The new R200 perfectly acceptable!
An email has been doing the rounds, urging South Africans to exchange all R200 notes before 01 June 2010, as no R200 note will be accepted thereafter. According to the email the bank will apparently exchange R200 notes up to the amount of R5000 only. If you are stashing away more cash than this, you’ll have to go straight to the Reserve Bank and deal with the big dudes.
This email has achieved what is was set out to do:
Create confusion and spread panic.
The truth is this: Only the old series R200 notes are being recalled. The reason why the Reserve Bank is doing away with the old R200 note (produced between 1994 and late 2004) is due to the fact that it’s quite easy to fake and reproduce these old notes because of the outdated technology that was used when they were created back in the day.
The new R200 notes are perfectly acceptable and no organisation or business has the right to refuse them.
Ways to identify the new R200 note is as follows-
- There is a new coat of arms on the front top left corner.
- The 5 small diamonds in a row at the bottom.
- The denomination ’200′ printed in colour-changing ink on the bottom right.
- The metal thread running vertically down the new note – at 4mm, it is far thicker than the strip on the old note
luckily I dont have any r200 notes, only r10′s