Since 2015, Richard FAILLE, a french entrepreneur, developed a concept of tourist currency or “zero euro” banknote sold on tourist sites all over France. He was rapidely successfull. Now his product, often sold out after a few weeks, creates interest in many other european countries.

NUMISMAG: Mister FAILLE, the tourist currency collection seems to be well established since this year out of France. What are your expectations from here to the end of the year 2017 (new countries opening, types of new foreign customers – institutional or tourist sites head offices)?

Richard FAILLE: We have two countries which we wish to open to the collection, Portugal and Spain. In Italy, we are in search of a partner who would be our licencee for this country. The case of Switzerland is a little particular insofar as the market is totally new and we needed to adapt the product to this specific market. We opened the market in 2017. Memories products market is less more developed than in the other countries. They do not know for example tourist tokens. All the reference frame and the network of tourist sites potentially interested by our banknotes have to be created. In Belgium, after difficult beginnings, our licencee engaged the collection well and knew to recruit prestigious client sites such as Atomium of Brussels, Waterloo, BOUILLON Castle or Bastogne War Museum.

Richard FAILLE

NUMISMAG: Germany is in particular a market that is in full expansion. How do you explain this fast success?

Richard FAILLE: The key factors were the quality of our licencee work, Euroschein Memory and the signature of famous tourist sites such as SCHLOSS BERLIN, for example. The success of the first issues was quickly known from tourist sites managers circle. The sites like the product and german collectors do collect much more banknotes than the French collectors do. Moreover, the strong use of cash in Germany in the daily life, as means of payment, is a factor which played in favour of our product marketing strategy. Considering the success of our banknotes, our partner LEUCHTURM considers, in the long term, the edition of an album for tourist currency issued only by the german sites. The german market could even in the long term be more important than the french market…

NUMISMAG: The european banknotes news were marked at the end of 2016 by new and first english £5 polymer banknote. May we see one day polymer tourist currency?

RICHARD FAILLE: Yes and no. The collection in its globality will remain printed on fiduciary paper. However, it is true that some National Central Banks (NCB) showed their interest for this kind of fiduciary polymer notes. The Bank of England in fact is part of it. Our partner, the fiduciary printer “Oberthur fiduciaire”, wish to develop a short serie which would be also a test issue for Oberthur printer, for the orders currency orders of NCB in the future (note: Oberthur manufactures a third of circulating banknotes around the world). The use of polymeric material implies the disappearance of security wire, which is a considerable warranty against counterfeiting. For polymer banknotes, this wire is in general replaced by a transparent window. We are thinking about a short serie of tourist currency on polymeric support…maybe at the end of 2017…

NUMISMAG: How would you develop this serie?

RICHARD FAILLE: We think of developing a serie of 15 tourist currencies, dedicated to 15 worldwide notorious sites, i.e. 15 UNESCO classified sites. The issue volume would be 2017 series of 15 notes each, that is to say 30,255 notes. Only 2 000 baknotes would be for sale to collectors.

A serie of 15 notes would be proposed at a retail price of 100€ (VAT included) and will be marketed by numismatic dealers. It will be a very small collection, able to make the buzz in collectors world. But we expect the returns of the collectors and dealers on this new short polymer serie before the official issue. It will be a collection within the tourist currency collection. It will be to some extent the “haute couture” part of the collection. If the short serie meets success, it could be wide, for example, to historical great figures.

Source: NUMISMAG.