The Royal Mint has unveiled a ground-breaking addition to its bullion portfolio with the launch of the new secure Britannia bullion bar. Security features previously exclusive to its world-renowned coins have been rolled out into its gold bar range for the first time.

ABC Refinery has announced its adoption of the ProvCheck app, allowing customers to authenticate the provenance of its ABC Bullion gold bars. Currently compatible with numbered 1kg ABC Bullion gold bars, the app enables customers to scan their bars and unlock the mine-to-market history of the product, including the gold’s origin and attributable carbon emissions.

Researchers at the Centre for Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada have utilised image-mining techniques and machine learning algorithms to identify flaws in counterfeit coins, enabling greater detection of fakes.

The Central Bank of Kosovo has released details of its efforts to fight counterfeit currency, noting that it had successfully coordinated inter-institutional meetings to design and implement effective strategies to combat the circulation of counterfeit coins, especially €2 coins.

Dr Tomasz Jagielinski has embarked on a new endeavour by forming NXTGenDetect, LLC, a company that will specialise in providing comprehensive consulting and advisory services in the field of security, detection, and authentication, focusing on banknotes, coins, and other high- value items.

Brazilian gold aggregator Fênix DTVM, in partnership with company Minespider, has completed their first phase of a gold traceability project in Brazil.

As technology evolves, so do the methods used by counterfeiters and other bad actors in attempting to circumvent any new features put in place to ensure the authenticity and traceability of products. This is particularly true in the currency industries and, most relevant here, in the case of precious metals and numismatic products.

Leondaro Abdias, Director of Innovation and Market at the Brazilian mint, Casa da Moeda do Brasil, announced measures to combat illegal gold trade in Brazil during an event held in May titled ‘Ways of Gold: the Importance of Traceability to Prevent Illegality and Irregular Extraction’.

Counterfeiting is nothing new – indeed it has often been called the world’s second oldest profession. Counterfeiting of money has been going on ever since the invention of physical money in around the 6th century BC.

SICPA has recently extended its operations into the gold market with the launch of BullionProtect®, which is now being used by Indonesian bullion producer Hartadinata to provide more confidence in gold bar trading.