2016-02-17 Wed

The 12-sided £1 coin will be released on 28th March and old round pounds will seize to be legal tender after 15th October. People will have to get them exchanged or spend them before the deadline.

The £1 coin has been changed after more than 30 years. Almost 1/3rd of the £1.3 billion worth of coins are “Round Pounds”. About 3 percent of the current round £1 coins are fake as per official reports. The new coins are struck using the patented iSIS (Integrated Secure Identification Systems) to protect the public, vending machine operators, retailers, and the wider banking system from counterfeits.

The reverse design of the new 12-sided coin was selected through a public competition. Out of more than 6,000 entries, a 15-year-old student David Pearce’s design was selected as the winning design. The design features a rose, leek, thistle and shamrock emerging from a royal coronet.