First it was transit ticket machines, and now it’s regular vending machines that still aren’t able to handle the new polymer $20 bills, despite coming out in November. Or rather, not all of them. There may be as many as half a million vending machines across the country that need to be reprogrammed to accept the new bills. 

The process to reprogram the machines isn’t a fast or inexpensive one either — each machine (which doesn’t just include vending machines, but also can include self-serve checkouts, parking meters, and even ATMs) requires 15 minutes with a technician on a laptop. And the software to do it also takes months to develop. What’s even more annoying is that new polymer $5 and $10 bills are set to come out later this year, and machines can’t be programmed until the new bills are out. The Canadian National Vending Alliance asked for the $5, $10s, and $20 bills to all come out at once, but the Bank of Canada decided to release the lower denominations later, meaning that this will become a problem again in a few months. Vending machine owners and manufacturers are obviously not pleased. 

The bills, which are made of a plastic polymer, are meant to be harder to counterfeit and sturdier than their paper counterparts. Aside from not being accepted in all vending machines, there is also some controversy surrounding the bill’s tendency to melt in high temperatures.

[via CBC]

____

Megan Patterson is the Science and Technology Editor at Paper Droids and currently a Toronto Standard intern. She has also written for WORN Fashion Journal, Elevate, and Salon Magazines. She also tweets more than is healthy or wise. 

For more, follow us on Twitter at @torontostandard and subscribe to our Newsletter.