Mr. Wintergerst, if you had to use the banknotes to identify countries in the “Wetten, dass” scenario, how many do you think you would be able to manage?

Ilka Kopplin

Business correspondent in Munich.

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In any case, I wouldn't be eliminated in the first round.

We produce banknotes for an average of 80 countries each year.

I used to look at them regularly because I was responsible for the division for many years.

How much money do you print?

A thousand banknotes weigh about one kilogram, so one banknote weighs one gram. If the note has a small value, it is often several tons.

That is billions of banknotes a year and requires large storage capacities.

The pure printing of banknotes only accounts for 15 percent of total sales.

The 10 thaler note for Bavaria was the first banknote printed by G + D in 1856.

Since then a lot has happened.

But what can still be improved on banknotes today?

The money we see today is full of technology.

A banknote, for example, has movement and tilting effects that are created in very complex processes.

In contrast to the past, there are now many machines that check money for security features and detect forgeries.

In order to always be one step ahead of the counterfeiters, regular checks are carried out to see whether the security features are still working or whether there has to be a new generation.

You have to change the recipe more often to reduce counterfeiting.

That is the basic principle by which central banks operate.

It's like a rabbit and a hedgehog.

How do you make sure that the recipe really stays a secret?

Many years ago I presented a customer - it was a very large country - with a secret recipe for the security features of a banknote and at the same time said that he couldn't have the formula for it.

Otherwise there is far too great a risk that the recipe will fall into the wrong hands.

How did he react?

In the end we agreed that the prescription would be placed in the safe at a notary, and only if something happened to G + D, the prescription can be fetched out and reproduced.

In the film "Catch me if you can" a counterfeiter is caught and then changes sides.

Do you also have such defectors?

No defectors, but we have employees trying to hack our own codes.

Because we not only develop the banknotes, but also the security components and the machines that check the banknotes in circulation.

Today we provide almost 90 percent of these central bank systems in Europe.

We are therefore always in contact with the authorities who collect the forgeries.

We do the same with our cybersecurity technologies.

We have to constantly check our systems for the real world, otherwise they are only half as good.

There should be redesigned euro bills in 2024.

Why do we need new bills when digital payments are increasingly being made?