From paper to the £5 polymer: the origins of the banknote

Kublai Khan, said Marco Polo, had ‘a more extensive command of treasure than any other sovereign in the universe’. There were no jangling pockets of coins in Kanbalu. Bark had been stripped from the mulberry trees and beaten into paper notes. The notes carried delicate little pictures of earlier currency — long, frayed ropes weighed down with coins. It was as though they were mocking the old ways.

Paper money had been produced in China from as early as the 7th century, but that did not stop Marco Polo from gushing that the Great Khan had discovered ‘the secret of the alchemists’. Back home, there was much curiosity but apparently little urgency. Only in 1661 did the first banknotes circulate in Europe. Sweden led the way, printing white, countersigned ‘Palmstrucher’ notes at the Bank of Stockholm. The goldsmiths of London issued their own ‘running cash notes’, while the Bank of England began to print notes ‘payable to bearer’ soon after it opened its doors in 1694.