Banks, money changers refuse to accept old design US dollars notes

KARACHI: Many people across the country face an uncertain situation as banks and money changers have refused to accept the old-design United States dollar notes.

This causes great risk of devaluation for many people who keep dollars in their lockers, and prefer cash to settle payments to avoid tax on bank transaction. This can affect those people who are not familiar between the design of the old and new notes.

Bank and money changers confirmed that they are not accepting the old-design as they are susceptible to fraud.

Many money changers are charging up to four percent fee to exchange the old-design notes. The note is accepted in Dubai and is exported by money changers there.

While many have criticized the money changers for exploiting the situation and charging hefty commissions, the money changers claim that the amount is used to incur the cost of banking transactions.

Money changers seem to buy old-design notes at a cheaper price and manage to exchange them in Dubai without incurring any cost and make a heavy profit.

The situation seems have arose only in Pakistan as old-design dollar notes are not officially banned anywhere in the world. The banks said that there is a ban in several countries such as Russia, China and Thailand.

The new design of the $100 bill has a blue stripe in middle of the note. The old bills without the blue stripe are not currently accepted by Pakistani banks.

There is no official restriction on the old-design note by of the government of Pakistan or any policy guidelines issued by the State Bank.