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Love them or hate them, Canada’s polymer banknotes appear to be a big success when it comes to fighting counterfeiters.

The Bank of Canada, which introduced the new $50 bill and $20 bills last year, kept the number of fake bills floating around well below its target of 50 notes per million in circulation in 2012, the latest data shows.

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In its 2012 annual report, the Bank said counterfeiting fell to 28 notes per million in circulation in 2012, down from 34 notes per million in 2011.

What’s more, the face value of counterfeit bills in circulation dropped by 40% to $1.6-million last year from $2.6-million in 2011.

The revamped bills are decked out with novel security features intended to deter would-be counterfeiters and make them easier to authenticate: metallic imagery, transparent text and hidden numbers, to name a few. They’re also supposed to last nearly 2.5 times longer than the previous cotton-based paper notes.