New Coat of Arms to appear on banknotes from August

The Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go has an­nounced that the new Coat of Arms will be in­tro­duced on ban­knotes from Au­gust, be­gin­ning with the Se­ries 2026 TT$100 de­nom­i­na­tion.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the bank said the Coat of Arms forms part of the de­sign of all T&T ban­knotes and coins and be­came valid from Feb­ru­ary 25 last year. How­ev­er, it said con­sis­tent with the Na­tion­al Em­blems of Trinidad and To­ba­go (Reg­u­la­tion) (Amend­ment) (Ex­ten­sion of Time for Use of For­mer Coat of Arms) Or­der, 2025, the for­mer Coat of Arms re­mains valid un­til Jan­u­ary 2, 2031.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, fol­low­ing the in­tro­duc­tion of the Se­ries 2026 $100 ban­knote, all $100 notes and oth­er de­nom­i­na­tions with Se­ries dates pri­or to 2026, as well as all coins bear­ing the for­mer Coat of Arms, will be changed out on a phased ba­sis. The bank said old notes and coins with the for­mer Coat of Arms that are in ac­tive cir­cu­la­tion will re­main le­gal ten­der un­til Jan­u­ary 2, 2031, or a lat­er date if ex­tend­ed by the Min­is­ter of Home Af­fairs.

Pro­vid­ing an up­date on the launch of the Se­ries 2026 TT$100 ban­knote, the Cen­tral Bank said the cur­rent $100 note in cir­cu­la­tion be­longs to the 2019 Se­ries. It ex­plained that based on nor­mal ban­knote in­dus­try prac­tices adopt­ed by mon­e­tary au­thor­i­ties glob­al­ly, in­clud­ing the Cen­tral Bank of Trinidad and To­ba­go, a mid-se­ries up­grade is usu­al­ly is­sued with­in sev­en years. This, the Cen­tral Bank said, sup­ports mod­erni­sa­tion and re­flects de­vel­op­ments in tech­nol­o­gy that of­fer en­hanced sub­strate ma­te­ri­als, ad­vanced se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, im­proved print­ing tech­niques and greater dura­bil­i­ty.

The Cen­tral Bank said the Se­ries 2026 TT$100 ban­knote will en­ter cir­cu­la­tion from Au­gust and will co-cir­cu­late with the 2019 Se­ries. It said the tim­ing al­lows for ac­tiv­i­ties re­quired be­fore cur­ren­cy is­suance, in­clud­ing se­cure ship­ment and dis­tri­b­u­tion of notes to stake­hold­ers for the adap­ta­tion of cash pro­cess­ing ma­chin­ery and train­ing. In ad­di­tion, the bank said time is need­ed for in­fra­struc­ture mod­erni­sa­tion to ac­com­mo­date pro­cess­ing of the new de­nom­i­na­tion, based on its spec­i­fi­ca­tions and se­cu­ri­ty fea­tures, as well as for the ex­e­cu­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive “Know Your Mon­ey” pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion cur­ren­cy cam­paign.

The bank said the de­sign of the Se­ries 2026 will re­tain key el­e­ments of the 2019 Se­ries in terms of look and feel, in­clud­ing colour, size, poly­mer sub­strate, the na­tion­al flag and tac­tile fea­tures for the vi­su­al­ly im­paired. It said the new se­ries will fea­ture en­hanced se­cu­ri­ty el­e­ments, in­clud­ing a larg­er trans­par­ent win­dow in­cor­po­rat­ing the Bird of Par­adise, along with ad­di­tion­al fea­tures re­flect­ing ad­vances in ban­knote print­ing tech­nol­o­gy over the past five years. The Se­ries 2026 TT$100 ban­knote will al­so in­clude the new Coat of Arms.

The Cen­tral Bank said it will con­tin­ue its an­nu­al “Know Your Mon­ey” cam­paigns across its com­mu­ni­ca­tion chan­nels and will is­sue pub­lic no­tices with fur­ther de­tails clos­er to the re­lease date of the new ban­knote se­ries.

Last month, Min­is­ter of Home Af­fairs Roger Alexan­der an­nounced that Gov­ern­ment had agreed to ex­tend the use of the old Coat of Arms un­til 2031.

The de­ci­sion to amend the Coat of Arms was made by the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment in Jan­u­ary last year. When it was pro­claimed, the then-gov­ern­ment stip­u­lat­ed that the for­mer Coat of Arms could be used un­til Jan­u­ary 1, 2026, af­ter which the re­designed na­tion­al em­blem was in­tend­ed to take full ef­fect.

The new de­sign re­moved the three ships rep­re­sent­ing Christo­pher Colum­bus’ ar­rival to this coun­try in 1498 with the steel­pan, the na­tion­al in­stru­ment.