Why banknotes starting with F (Europa series) are from Malta?

[Anony]

Hello community,

I think there is an error when registering a new bank note of Europa series with a serial number starting with F:


As you can see, a Maltan flag appears, meanwhile, following the ECB design elements for Europa series:

The serial numbers on this series are the two numbers printed on the back of the banknote: a horizontal number printed in black and a vertical number printed in a different colour.

The horizontal number comprises two letters and ten digits. The first letter identifies the printing works – see the list below. The second letter has no particular meaning; it simply makes more serial numbers possible.

We see they confirm we can locate the printing works from the serial number in the back of each note, and for the F letter, we see the printing works is for the french company Oberthur Fiduciaire in their printing on Sofia (Bulgaria).

So, this banknote, should be from Bulgaria, and not from Malta, right?


I also want to clarify that, according to the ECB design elements, for the first series, the first letter of the serial number represents the country of the original receiver national bank, and F represents Malta.

Best regards.

[g.s.51]

For the EUROPA series banknotes, the letter F has nothing to do with Malta. It represents the OBERTHUR company in Bulgaria.

[tigerpranke]

You are right. When entering a note of the series with a serial number starting with FA the wrong flag is shown.

This is a known error and has to be fixed. See this post Eurobilltracker-site Feedback.

[Rotes Gras]

Soon Bulgaria is going to join the euro.

As for today Oberthur France has printed banknotes starting with an F in Bulgaria.

Is this going to change?

Will Bulgaria be starting to issue its own banknotes starting with an F?

I could quite imagine that for it is a very huge country and, as Oberthur has shown, it is probably the cheapest place to print banknotes throughout the EU.