New Australian $5 note rejected by vending machines, self-checkout counters

The new $5 note may be aesthetically pleasing, but it’s basically useless on vending machines and self-checkout counters. The revamped Australian bill’s distinctive transparent strip has rendered it unreadable in vending machines, poker machines and self-checkout counters.

The new note has new tactile features to help the vision-impaired community, as well as security features to prevent counterfeiting. Initial online reactions to the design weren’t positive, but it appears some critics were won over by the time it came into circulation on Sep. 1.

Australia’s new $5 banknote design panned

However, there’s one design flaw in the new $5 note that has businesses scrambling to update their systems.

“The note reader starts to read the note and sees the clear strip, it identifies that as the end of the note, and of course it can’t recognise it, so it spits it back out,” Nick Aronis, president of the National Vending Association, explained to the Daily Telegraph why vending machines don’t recognise the redesigned $5 bill.

Kmart’s self-service checkouts and pokie machines are also rejecting the note. Woolworths, on the other hand, has scrambled to recalibrate its self-service checkout counters. Transport NSW also spent three weeks making its Opal card top up points in Sydney compatible. Up to 100,000 vending machines are still awaiting upgrade with a new firmware to recognise the note. The cost of the upgrade is expected to reach $20 million.

Erin Turner from consumer advocacy group Choice said the failure of the machines to recognise the $5 bill is no one’s fault but the businesses. She said the companies had no excuse because they had been aware that the new currency would require system upgrades for more than 12 months.

“Consumers rightly expect companies to be able to accept Australian currency,” she told Mashable. “These companies need to get their act together.”

Watch the introduction of the new $5 Australian note