Reference Directory

Who Prints the World's Money? The Security Printers Behind Nearly Every Banknote

The world's currencies come off a surprisingly small number of presses. Some countries run their own printworks and print nothing else. Others buy from a handful of commercial firms that take contracts from central banks on four continents. This page names them, dates them, says who owns them, and explains why the difference matters to a collector.

9 printers compared State vs commercial Paper and polymer Founded 1519 to 1913

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Last updated: September 2026

Who actually prints the world's money?

A short list of high security printers makes most of the world's banknotes. Around half of them are commercial companies selling to any central bank that will buy, and the rest are state bodies printing their own country's currency and nothing else. A third group sells no printed notes at all: it supplies the paper, the polymer film and the optical features everybody else builds on.

The concentration is the point. Only a handful of firms hold the combination a currency contract demands: intaglio presses, engraving staff, accredited premises, an ink and thread supply chain, and the ability to move a few hundred tonnes of banknotes across borders under guard. De La Rue alone says that 54 percent of issuing authorities buy its products and that it designed 60 percent of all commercially printed banknotes since 2020 (De La Rue).

This page is the directory. If you want the mechanics of the presses themselves, start with how banknotes are printed, which covers the four passes every note in the list below goes through.

The major banknote printers compared

Nine names cover most of the currency a collector will ever meet. Each row below is taken from the printer's own published statements or from the central bank that owns it. Founding dates range from 1519, for a Zurich press that predates banknotes entirely, to 1913 for Australia's.

Sources, by row: De La Rue, Giesecke+Devrient, Crane Currency, Oberthur Fiduciaire, Orell Füssli and its company history, Canadian Bank Note Company, Reserve Bank of Australia, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and uscurrency.gov, and China Banknote Printing and Minting.

What is the difference between a state printworks and a commercial printer?

A state printworks exists to serve one issuing authority and usually cannot sell its capacity elsewhere. A commercial printer bids for contracts, prints for many countries at once, and carries the business risk if orders dry up. The distinction shapes what a note looks like and how consistent a country's currency is from series to series.

Ownership sits on a spectrum rather than a switch. The Bureau of Engraving and Printing is a Treasury bureau, which is as state as it gets. Note Printing Australia has been a separately incorporated, wholly owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia since July 1998, which is state ownership with a commercial structure bolted on (Reserve Bank of Australia). Orell Füssli is a listed company in which the Swiss National Bank holds a 33 percent stake, so the central bank is a shareholder rather than the owner (Orell Füssli). De La Rue, Giesecke+Devrient, Crane Currency, Oberthur Fiduciaire and the Canadian Bank Note Company are commercial firms throughout.

The euro is the interesting hybrid. Euro banknotes come from eleven high security printing works spread across Europe, with the European Central Bank allocating production quotas among national central banks so that every denomination meets one standard wherever it is printed (European Central Bank). That is neither one state printer nor an open contract: it is a managed network.

Who prints money in the United States?

United States banknotes are printed by the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, a bureau of the Treasury, at facilities in Washington DC and Fort Worth, Texas. The BEP does not make coins: all US coinage comes from the United States Mint. No private company has printed US currency since 1877.

That last point has a date attached. Private banknote companies printed early federal currency and sent it to the Bureau only for sealing, trimming and cutting; the BEP began engraving and printing the faces and seals itself in 1869, Congress recognised the Bureau with its own appropriation for fiscal 1875, and in 1877 Congress mandated that the Treasury alone would engrave and print the notes, bonds and other securities of the United States (US Currency Education Program). The firm that lost most by that change was the American Bank Note Company, which had printed the first federal paper money in 1861.

The scale is worth stating because it explains why the BEP has no spare capacity for foreign work. The Federal Reserve Board approved and submitted its calendar year 2027 print order to the BEP on 13 July 2026, ranging from 4.8 billion to 5.7 billion notes valued at $132.1 billion to $166.4 billion (Federal Reserve Board, currency print orders). For the notes themselves, see the history of US paper money.

Who prints money in the UK?

Bank of England notes are printed by De La Rue under contract. The Bank states on its own site that it works closely with De La Rue, the company that currently prints its notes. Scotland and Northern Ireland are different: several commercial banks there issue their own notes, which are a separate system from Bank of England issues.

The arrangement dates from 2003, when De La Rue signed a seven year contract to print and supply sterling and took over the Bank's manufacturing operation, with the contract renewed in 2009 (De La Rue). All four denominations now circulate on polymer, in King Charles III and Queen Elizabeth II versions (Bank of England). The next British series is in design: nature was confirmed as the theme in March 2026, and a public consultation on the shortlisted species ran from 3 June 2026. More on that printer is in our De La Rue profile, and on the notes in the history of Bank of England notes.

Who makes the paper and the polymer?

Substrate is a separate industry from printing, and some of the biggest names in currency never run a banknote press. Crane Currency grew out of a Massachusetts paper mill and still supplies paper and micro-optic threads. Polymer film began with an Australian central bank joint venture rather than a printer.

Crane's line runs from 1775, when Stephen Crane supplied the paper for the plates Paul Revere engraved for early American securities, through Zenas Crane's bank paper mill of 1844, to 1879, when 26 year old W. Murray Crane secured a contract to produce paper for United States banknotes. The company added Sweden's Tumba Bruk in 2002, a mill that had been making paper, banknotes and security documents since 1755, and opened a 14,000 square metre plant at Hal Far in Malta in February 2018, the first new commercial banknote printing facility in decades. Its MOTION micro-optic thread debuted on the Swedish 1,000 kronor note (Crane Currency).

Polymer has a different origin story. Australia's Note Printing Branch worked with the CSIRO from 1966 to 1988 on a counterfeit resistant substrate, printing test three dollar and seven dollar notes along the way, and delivered the first circulating polymer banknote, a commemorative 10 dollar, in 1988. The Reserve Bank then split the substrate manufacturing operation off as a separate entity called Securency, in which the Bank held a 50 percent shareholding (Note Printing Australia). De La Rue developed its own competing film, SAFEGUARD, whose first note was the Fiji 5 dollar of 2012 to 2013. Giesecke+Devrient took the other route and bought a paper mill, Louisenthal, in 1964, adding foil production there in 2003 (Giesecke+Devrient). Our guides to banknote paper and polymer versus paper follow both materials in detail.

How does a central bank choose a printer?

Capacity, accreditation, security features and price, roughly in that order. A printer has to be able to deliver the whole order in the window the bank needs, prove its premises meet the standard, offer features the counterfeiters in that country are not already beating, and do it at a cost per thousand notes the bank can defend.

Accreditation is the quiet gatekeeper. Oberthur Fiduciaire states that all of its production sites are accredited by the European Central Bank, and lists ISO certifications for quality, security, environment, health and safety, anti-bribery and information security (Oberthur Fiduciaire). Without accreditation a printer cannot bid for euro work at all.

Capacity is the second filter, and the published numbers are large. Oberthur reports a production capacity of more than 5 billion banknotes a year across three sites in three European countries, with 1,300 employees. Crane Currency prints for more than 50 central banks. The Canadian Bank Note Company reports more than 2,000 staff and work in over 75 jurisdictions. A country ordering 30 million notes is a modest customer to any of them, which is exactly why small nations tend to buy commercially rather than build a printworks.

What happens when a printer gets into trouble?

Currency contracts are long and specialised, so when a printer struggles the effect shows up slowly, in disposals rather than missed notes. De La Rue is the clearest recent example: it shed businesses through the 2010s and 2020s until only currency was left, then changed hands entirely.

The sequence, from the company's own record, runs like this. Cash Processing Solutions was sold in 2016 and the Identity Solutions business in 2019. A turnaround plan and an associated fundraise followed in 2020. In 2022 the company ended its supply agreement with Portals Paper, freeing it to buy banknote paper from several sources, and opened a second polymer line at Westhoughton. Under a 2024 agreement it sold its Authentication Division to Crane NXT for 300 million pounds, and in 2025 it agreed a takeover by the United States investment firm Atlas Holdings (De La Rue).

Two things follow for collectors. First, the surviving business is narrower and more specialised than the conglomerate of the 1990s, which had sold everything from fountain pens to cash machines. Second, older imprints outlive their companies: Waterlow & Sons, acquired in 1961, and Bradbury Wilkinson, acquired in 1986, both appear on world notes that a buyer today would file under De La Rue's lineage rather than its name.

Can you tell which company printed a banknote?

Often, but not always. Older colonial and commercial issues carry a printer imprint in small type along the bottom border, and that is definitive. Most modern notes carry no imprint at all, so attribution comes from the issuing central bank, a catalogue, or the printer's own case studies.

Where an imprint exists it is usually spelled out in full, in a line under the design: the printer's name, sometimes with LONDON or NEW YORK after it. Nineteenth and early twentieth century notes are the richest hunting ground, which is why the American Bank Note Company is so much easier to collect by printer than any modern firm. The vocabulary for all of this, from imprint to estampa to underprint, is in our banknote glossary, and catalogue conventions are covered in the Pick number guide.

If you want to collect around printers rather than countries, the practical starting point is the catalogue itself. Browse banknotes by country and read the descriptions: imprints, printer initials and catalogue attributions are recorded there when a note carries them.

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.