New $50 bills debut this fall

WASHINGTON — A colorful new $50 bill with touches of red, blue and yellow will start showing up in banks, cash registers and wallets this fall.

Tom Ferguson, director of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, said the new bill, the second denomination of greenback to become no longer exclusively green, will go into circulation Sept. 28.

Ferguson said in an interview that 140 million new $50s will be produced by then. He estimates that at least half of them, or 70 million notes, will be at banks at the time.

The bureau, which makes the nation’s paper currency, displayed the new $50 bill in April, explaining that the colorizing project is to make the nation’s currency harder for counterfeiters to knock off.

The subtle colors, which appear in parts of what was once the cream-colored background on the note, are the most noticeable changes on the new $50, which still uses the traditional black ink on the front and green ink on the back.

The new bills also will still feature Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and 18th president, on the front and the U.S. Capitol on the back.

The $20 bill, the most counterfeited note in the United States, was the first to get the color treatment. Featuring splashes of peach, blue and yellow, the new $20 went into circulation last fall.