It’s here – the new £1 coin

We are still waiting for our first newly designed 12 sided £1 coin at PCCU. We have taken a look at the coin and its features to see how it may affect our account holders.

The important dates;

Coming into circulation 28th March 2017. Only 33 banks and post offices in the UK have been stocked with the coins for the first introduction day. The nearest to PCCU are Manchester, Leeds, Leeds and York so we might have to wait a day or so for them to trickle over the Pennines to our branches!

On the 15th October 2017 the old circular £1 coins will have their legal tender withdrawn. This means that shops will no longer accept them; however you will still be able to take them to a most banks or post offices. It is advised to spend or exchange your old £1 coins before this date. We do not intend to accept the old £1 coins at PCCU after the 15th October 2017. Although we do not expect large numbers of coins to deposited in PCCU savings accounts, those who are thinking of depositing should be mindful that banks, post offices and Credit Unions will struggle to accept mixed bags of old and new £1 coins.

There are a few coin operated machines that may take a while to fully accept the new shaped coin. However industries such as the vending machine, car parking and gaming machine companies indicated that although the change has come at a cost they are working towards the coin being fully accepted. BT have stated that the 45,000+ telephone boxes that it operate are almost all ready to accept the new coin and all the main supermarkets believe their trolleys can accept the coin from the 28th March 2017 – although Tesco said have said within the 10% of their stores that are not ready they will leave the trolleys unlocked for customers.

The Royal Mint is producing 1.5 billion of the new coins, according to the BBC that is £23 per person! It is widely accepted that there a large number of fake round £1 currently in circulation, with some people believing as many as 1 in 30 are counterfeit.

The eye catching design of the new coin with 12 sides, which is bimetallic meaning it is made of two metals similar to the current £2 coin, also features an image that changes from a £ sign to a number 1 from different angles.

It is thirty years since the last £1 was changed and we are pretty excited to see what they look like.