Taggant technology provides anti-counterfeiting solutions for many high value documents and items including banknotes, tax stamps and pharmaceuticals. But no one has ever tried using taggants to protect coins. Even though taggant technology is familiar to many mints, central banks and governments, no one has ever tried to incorporate this trusted technology into coins.   

 
There are many reasons mints have shied away from using taggant technology for coin anti-counterfeiting, but the main reasons stem from the metal structure of coins. Metals have a higher particle density than most other materials that use taggant technology for anti-counterfeiting. The higher particle density of metals blocks light which is needed for taggant technology to work.

But bold steps are needed.  Coin counterfeiting is on the rise and current anti-counterfeiting methods are not cutting it.

As a taggant technology provider, InkSure is venturing out and preparing to conduct research to find ways to incorporate taggants into coins so that coins can be authenticated via machine. We believe a process that uses taggants with light and electric signatures should be compatible with coins. The electric/light signature combination and could be the missing piece.

The next step is to take this theory, test it and see if specially engineered taggant readers can provide high security anti-counterfeiting solutions for coins. This means we need to test taggants, metals and different combinations of taggants and metals in order to try and find a combination that works with zero false positives and zero false negatives.

We have several ideas, but we need an R&D partner to help us test these ideas. Our ideal partner would be a mint or central bank with access to materials used to make coins currently in circulation. We would appreciate if you could share this blog post with relevant professionals in order to help us get the word out.

If you think you might be a potential R&D partner for this coin anti-counterfeiting research project please email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and ask for a copy of the presentation Taggants – The Machine Read Solution for Coins that InkSure's CEO, Tal Gilat, will be giving at the first annual Coin Conference in London this week.  

Want to learn more about taggant technology as a covert anti-counterfeiting solution? Make an appointment with an InkSure representative.