Microprinting / Microtext
Definition
Text printed at 0.2-0.5 mm letter height, legible under a 10x loupe on genuine notes but smeared into an indistinct grey line on counterfeits due to scanner resolution limits.
- Letter height
- 0.2 to 0.5 mm
- Verification tool
- 10x loupe or magnifier
- Genuine appearance
- Sharp, legible letterforms
- Counterfeit appearance
- Smeared, indistinct grey line
Common questions
Why do counterfeits fail to reproduce microprinting accurately?+
Consumer and commercial scanners and printers cannot resolve detail at the sub-half-millimetre scale of genuine microtext, so any attempt to copy it from a scanned image collapses into a blurred line rather than distinct characters.
Where is microprinting typically placed on a banknote?+
It commonly appears within larger design elements such as borders, portrait backgrounds, or numeral fields, positioned so it is invisible to the naked eye at normal viewing distance but confirmable instantly under magnification.
Related terms
- BOPP (Biaxially Oriented Polypropylene)
- The polymer film substrate for polymer-substrate banknotes (Australia, New Zealand, UK, Canada). Distinguished from cotton-linen paper notes by FTIR-ATR (CH3 methyl peaks...
- Cotton-Linen Substrate
- The traditional banknote paper substrate made from cotton fibre (and sometimes linen), containing no lignin, non-fluorescent under UV, textured under magnification; used...
- Intaglio Printing
- A high-pressure printing process in which ink is forced into engraved recesses in a steel plate and transferred to paper, producing a...
- KINEGRAM
- A diffractive optically variable image device (DOVID) in holographic foil used on passport biographical pages and visa stickers; produced by OVD Kinegram...
- Latent Image
- A feature visible only at oblique viewing angle, produced by differential intaglio surface profile; on the US $100, tilting reveals 'USA' within...
- Multi-Tone Watermark
- A watermark produced by graded modulation of substrate thickness during papermaking, creating a range of light-to-dark tones visible in transmitted light; more...
- Optically Variable Ink (OVI)
- An ink containing thin-film interference flakes (metal + dielectric layers, manufactured by SICPA and others) that produce a visible colour shift with...
- See-Through Register
- The precise front-to-back alignment of partial printed elements so that they combine into a complete image when the note is held to...
- Windowed Security Thread
- A polymer strip embedded in the substrate that alternates between being below the surface (visible as a dark stripe in transmitted light)...