Last updated: September 2026

What currency does Canada use?

Canada uses the Canadian dollar, ISO code CAD, divided into 100 cents. The Bank of Canada has been the sole issuer of Canadian banknotes since 1935, and the current denominations are the $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100, all printed on polymer rather than paper.

Canada committed to a decimal dollar long before it had a central bank. The Province of Canada revised its Currency Act in 1857 so that from 31 December 1857 all provincial accounts were kept in dollars, and silver and bronze coins denominated in cents and bearing the word Canada followed in 1858, which James Powell's A History of the Canadian Dollar, published by the Bank of Canada, calls the birth of a distinctive Canadian currency (Bank of Canada).

What size are Canadian banknotes?

Every Canadian banknote is the same size: 152.4 by 69.85 millimetres, or 6.0 by 2.75 inches. The Bank of Canada publishes that figure as the actual size of genuine notes, and it applies to all five circulating denominations, so a $5 and a $100 are identical in dimensions and are told apart by colour and design.

That single size is why Canadian notes are easy to house: any album page or sleeve cut for a modern Canadian note fits every denomination. The figure comes from the Bank's own rules on reproducing banknote images, which require a physical reproduction to be either smaller than three quarters or larger than one and a half times the genuine note. The Bank of Canada Museum's individual note records give the same measurement for the polymer notes and for the Canada 150 commemorative, and record the earlier Scenes of Canada and Canadian Journey notes at 152 by 69 mm and the Birds of Canada notes at 152 by 70 mm, which is the same size to the nearest millimetre. If you are comparing Canada against other countries, our banknote sizes chart puts the numbers side by side.

What is the history of Canadian banknotes?

Canadian paper money came from three sources in turn. The Dominion government issued Dominion of Canada notes from 1870, private chartered banks issued their own designs until 1944, and the Bank of Canada took over as sole issuer when it opened in 1935.

The federal story begins with the Dominion Notes Act, under which Ottawa took over the provincial note issues after Confederation. The first series engraved for the new Dominion appeared in 1870, printed by the British American Bank Note Company, with a portrait of Jacques Cartier on the $1. In the same year the government issued 25-cent fractional notes, the famous shinplasters, as a temporary measure to drive depreciated American silver out of circulation. They proved popular and kept circulating for decades. The Uniform Currency Act of April 1871 then set the denominations of Canadian currency as dollars, cents and mills across the new country.

Alongside those government notes, chartered banks such as the Bank of Montreal and the Royal Bank of Canada printed their own money in their own designs, a right that ended in 1944 when banks were prohibited from issuing notes. Those chartered issues are a huge and affordable collecting field in themselves, full of local vignettes and hometown connections.

The Bank of Canada, created by the Bank of Canada Act of 1934, opened for business on 11 March 1935 and issued its first banknote series the same day. It was really two issues, because separate French and English versions of every denomination were produced, the only time that would happen. It was also the only series to feature royalty other than the reigning monarch: seven members of King George V's family appear across the denominations, with prime ministers on the two highest. The $500 was unique to this series, as was the $25, a commemorative for the King's silver jubilee (Bank of Canada Museum).

Canadian banknote series, 1935 to today

Eight Bank of Canada series have followed one another since 1935, and each one is a response to the counterfeiting technology of its day. The table below gives the years, the defining feature, and the size where the Bank or its Museum publishes one.

The 1937 series arrived only two years after the first because the death of King George V in 1936 and the abdication of Edward VIII forced a redesign, and the government used the moment to amend the Bank of Canada Act so that all future notes would be bilingual, thirty years before the Official Languages Act (Bank of Canada Museum). Two later series also carry commemorative notes: a Canada 150 note unveiled on 7 April 2017 with four portraits on the front, and a commemorative polymer $20 in the Frontiers series.

Why is the 1954 Devil's Face note famous?

On the first printings of the 1954 series, highlights in the curls behind Queen Elizabeth II's ear looked to some people like a horned face. The portrait had been engraved faithfully from a Yousuf Karsh photograph, so the effect was accidental, but the Bank of Canada had the engraving modified and no more of these notes were issued after 1956.

The Bank of Canada Museum, which calls them the Devil's Head notes, records that the portrait on every 1954 denomination was engraved by George Gundersen of the British American Bank Note Company, and that Canadian Bank Note Company engraver Yves Baril modified the engraving. The Museum's record for the 1954 $10 gives a date of issue of 9 September 1954, the modification in June 1956, and a last day of issue of 1 November 1971 (Bank of Canada Museum).

When did Canada switch to polymer banknotes?

Canada moved to polymer with the Frontiers series between 2011 and 2013. The Bank of Canada issued the polymer $100 on 14 November 2011, the $50 on 26 March 2012, the $20 on 7 November 2012, and the $5 and $10 together on 7 November 2013, completing the rollout.

Governor Mark Carney released the first note, the $100, at the MaRS Centre in Toronto (Bank of Canada), and Governor Stephen Poloz closed the series two years later, saying the five denominations now shared one suite of security features (Bank of Canada). The Museum notes that polymer lasts about two and a half times longer than a paper note and resists the soiling of daily handling. Our comparison of polymer and paper banknotes covers what the substrate changes for a collector, and how to spot counterfeit banknotes walks through the window and holographic checks.

Why is the vertical Viola Desmond $10 special?

The $10 note issued on 19 November 2018 broke new ground twice. It was Canada's first vertically oriented banknote, and Viola Desmond became the first Canadian woman to appear on a regular Bank of Canada note. The back features the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, where the note was launched.

Governor Stephen S. Poloz issued the note at a ceremony at the Museum alongside Wanda Robson, Viola Desmond's sister, and the first notes were spent in the building that appears on the reverse (Bank of Canada). Desmond, a Nova Scotia businesswoman, refused to leave a whites-only area of a movie theatre in 1946 and was jailed, convicted and fined, and she received a free pardon from the government of Nova Scotia in 2010. The note's security features include a colour-shifting eagle feather and metallic images of the Library of Parliament's vaulted dome inside a large transparent window.

The vertical series is still growing. On 3 September 2026 the Bank unveiled a vertical $20 carrying a portrait of King Charles III, Canada's first note to show His Majesty and the first new monarch on the $20 in more than seventy years; it enters circulation in late February 2027 (Bank of Canada). A vertical $5 featuring Terry Fox, announced on 16 December 2024, will follow the $20, with no release date set (Bank of Canada). For collectors that means the Frontiers notes in your wallet are already becoming a closed series.

What are old Canadian banknotes worth?

Most circulated Canadian notes from the 1954 series onward are affordable, and the premium sits in the Devil's Face printings and the retired high denominations. The table below gives catalogue values in US dollars from the PMG World Paper Money Price Guide, read in September 2026, at Very Good 8, Very Fine 20 and Uncirculated 60.

Two rows carry the whole lesson. Compare the 1954 $20 in its Devil's Face form against the same denomination with the modified portrait and the premium is obvious at every grade, and it widens as condition improves. The same is true of the $1,000: the earlier printing is worth several times the later one in uncirculated condition. Catalogue values are a reference, not a quote, and centring, corners and certification all move the real number. Our page on what determines banknote value covers the rest, and the catalogue numbers above are Pick numbers, explained in our guide to Pick numbers.

Are old Canadian banknotes still legal tender?

Most are, but five denominations are not. As of 1 January 2021 the $1, $2, $25, $500 and $1,000 notes from every Bank of Canada series stopped being legal tender. The Bank of Canada still honours all of them at face value, and many are worth more than face value to a collector.

The Bank explains the background plainly: Parliament amended the Bank of Canada Act and the Currency Act in 2018 to give the government the power to remove that status, and the five denominations chosen had not been produced in decades. The $1 stopped being issued in 1989 and the $2 in 1996, both replaced by coins; the $1,000 stopped in 2000; and the $25 and $500 were discontinued shortly after they were issued in 1935 (Bank of Canada). The practical advice for anyone who finds a stack of old notes is simple: have them looked at by a dealer before taking them to a bank, because the collector value can be a large multiple of the face value.

How do you start collecting Canada banknotes?

Pick one era and learn it well. Shinplasters and the later paper series are budget friendly, the 1954 Devil's Face variety gives you a famous and well-documented target, and the polymer and vertical notes can still be found in pristine condition straight from circulation.

Signature combinations matter in Canada as much as design does, because the Bank reissued the same design under successive Governor and Deputy Governor pairs. The price table above shows two 1954 $20 notes that look identical but sit apart in value for that reason alone. Learn the vocabulary with our banknote glossary, get the grading ladder straight with the banknote grading guide, and decide early whether you want raw notes or certified ones using our graded versus raw comparison. Queen Elizabeth II appears on Canadian notes from 1935 to the Frontiers series, a thread followed across the Commonwealth in our page on Queen Elizabeth II banknotes, and the women who have appeared on money worldwide are covered in women on banknotes.

When you buy, choose a source-first dealer that authenticates every note and backs it in writing. Planet Banknote sources direct from mints, central banks and authorized distributors, and you can browse current stock through the banknotes by country directory or the graded banknotes selection. Our guide to buying world banknotes safely sets out what to check first, and how to collect world banknotes covers the decisions a new collector faces.

Planet Banknote is a family-owned dealership in Sarasota, Florida, founded in 2021. Every note is sourced direct from mints, central banks, and authorized distributors, inspected through our Planet Banknote Verified process, and ships with a free Certificate of Authenticity. US orders ship free via USPS Priority, and every order includes a free bonus gift.