Get ready to throw away all those ratty old Benjamins that are just laying around your house—the newly designed $100 bill will be going into circulation in October.

(Just kidding about throwing away the old ones. They'll still be recognized as legal tender.)

The bill bearing the face of Benjamin Franklin is the world's most frequently counterfeited piece of U.S. currency, due in large part to the proliferation of hard-to-identify fakes coming out of North Korea. These phony bills, called "supernotes," are extremely difficult for anyone other than an expert to spot. The new design hopes to thwart that.

Some new features on the upcoming bills include:

  • a blue, three-dimensional security ribbon ingrained in the note itself, as opposed to printed on
  • moving images of bells and the number 100 (moving as you change your viewing angle, that is)
  • a second security strip that becomes visible only at a certain angle

We would show you a picture of one of the new bills, but that would ruin the whole surprise, wouldn't it? You're just going to have to wait till October.

 

More From 107.3 KFFM