Last month a Nottingham taxi driver drove a passenger to a police station after recognising counterfeit notes. Nottinghamshire Police say he knew the cash was fake by the look and feel, and the passenger was later arrested on suspicion of several offences. Rhys Phillips, chief cashier of the Bank of England, told the BBC that the driver "did the right thing" by alerting officers. "I certainly wouldn't be suggesting that people should put their personal safety at risk."
How many notes are fake
In that interview Phillips called counterfeit banknotes "very rare", and described them as making up "a tiny fraction of 1% of the notes that are in circulation". In 2025 the Bank recorded 200,000 counterfeit notes, with a notional face value of £3.97 million. A counterfeit cannot legally be spent, and the Bank will not pay anyone back for one. Typically less than 0.0041% of banknotes were counterfeit that year, fewer than 1 in 24,390. The Bank's count of notes in circulation, taken on the last day of February 2025, was 4.729 billion, worth £85.872 billion.
The counterfeit counts are rounded to the nearest 1,000. On that table, 178,000 were £20 notes, notionally worth £3.56 million. In 2012, while paper notes were still in use, 747,000 counterfeits were found, notionally worth £13.73 million. The Bank says counterfeiting has fallen substantially since 2019, after the introduction of polymer, the withdrawal of paper designs, police action against the sources and distribution of fakes, and the shift to electronic payments.
How to check a note
The polymer these notes are printed on is very hard to produce, and therefore very hard to counterfeit. A note that does not look and feel as expected is an obvious sign it is not genuine. The security features are the same on King Charles III notes and on Queen Elizabeth II notes.
Phillips named the hologram and the see-through window. "On the side of the note that has the monarch's head - look at the bottom, there's a hologram. As you turn the note from side to side, it flips from saying Five, Ten, Twenty, or Fifty, to Pounds, and back again. On the front of the note, the detailed foil should have a gold colour to it, whereas on the back, it should look silver. If you look at those, study those features, and they look right, the chances are you can be confident your notes are authentic."
The Bank's guide sets out the colours denomination by denomination, which matters when the fare is a £20. The hologram is a silver foil patch below the main see-through window, and the words change between the value of the note and Pounds when the note is tilted from side to side. The window carries a portrait of the monarch, with the value and the words Bank of England printed twice around the edge. The foil over the window is gold on the front of a £5 or £10, gold and blue on a £20, and gold and green on a £50, and silver on the back of every denomination. A £20 or a £50 also has a smaller window in the bottom corner. Raised print can be felt on the words Bank of England and in the bottom right corner.
If the fare is already paid
Phillips said a doubtful note should be refused, and a note already taken must not be passed on. "Don't forget, it's illegal to knowingly sell or pass on a counterfeit note, so if you do that you risk being prosecuted yourself." The local police may want the note as evidence. "If they don't, you can send it to the Bank of England, where our staff will analyse and use the note as part of evidence in the wider fight against counterfeiting. If you send it to us and it turns out to be authentic, we will reimburse you. Unfortunately, we can't reimburse people for counterfeit notes because they are valueless."
A confirmed counterfeit is worthless, and the Bank does not reimburse it. If the police do not take the note, the Bank asks for it to be posted back on its form for individuals. Officers should fill in an NCO-1 form and give a receipt and an incident number. The notes are sent to the National Crime Agency and, if counterfeit, to the Bank. Knowingly passing or selling a counterfeit is an offence under the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981, and the maximum sentence is 10 years' imprisonment.
Where the fakes are coming from
Phillips said the notes come from a range of sources, that some of the groups responsible in the past were "quite large, quite organised, quite sophisticated", and that a lot of counterfeits are currently coming from overseas and are often sold on social media or online platforms. "Some of them are poor quality, they are just flat, printed ink on polymer. Some of them try to emulate some of the more advanced security features that we put in our notes, although importantly, any counterfeit that we are aware of can be detected using the techniques that we employ."
The Bank is aware of a small number of online accounts offering counterfeit notes on social media, marketplaces and forums. The offers are often scams, even when they show a picture or a video, and nobody should try to buy them. Counterfeiting funds organised crime, and the loss falls on the business or the driver left with a worthless note.