The new Twenty is here!

The euro was introduced as a cash currency almost 15 years ago. On Wednesday, the European Central Bank (ECB) launched a new 20-euro banknote. The ECB started to gradually replace the first generation of Euro notes when it introduced a new five-euro note in May 2013. It followed up with a new 10-euro note in September 2014. The new 50-euro bill is set to go into circulation in 2017.

At first, old and new banknotes will be in use simultaneously. The ECB will withdraw old twenties from circulation bit by bit. In the long term, old banknotes will lose their value as cash payment, but people will be able to trade in old bills for new ones at national central banks. Mario Draghi and his team have yet to announce the timing of the cutoff.

According to the German national bank, the 20-euro banknote is currently the most popular bill to counterfeit: Four out of five fake banknotes in Germany are 20-euro bills. The new twenties have new and improved security Features, so they'll be harder to counterfeit.

One security feature of the new twenty is a see-through hologram. A "portrait window" near the top of the hologram stripe becomes transparent when back-lighted, and reveals a portrait of Europa, a figure from Greek mythology. The ECB is calling its series of new euro notes the "Europa Series."

Another security feature is a shiny "20" printed on the bill. It changes hue from emerald green to deep blue, depending on the angle it's viewed from. The rim of the note and another "20" printed on the middle of the note are both in raised print, which can be felt when moving one's fingers over the bill.

The new twenty looks only slightly different than its predecessor. The bill's blue hue is less pale. The word "euro" is printed not just in Latin and Greek letters, but also in Cyrillic, the alphabet used in Bulgaria. The initials of the central bank "ECB" are shown in nine rather than five linguistic variants, due to the enlargement of the European Union since 2002.

The main motif of the euro banknotes, European architectural ages and styles, remains the same in the new generation of bills, with the same images from different epochs. The 20-euro note still bears a facade from the Gothic period, while the ten-euro note still has a Romanic doorway on it, and the five-euro note still shows a gate from the Classical period.

Initially, new 20-euro bills worth roughly 4,5 billion euros will be distributed. Manufacturing the new money cost approximately 180 million euros, eight cents per banknote. Those who refer to euros as "paper money" are technically wrong: Euro notes are made of cotton fiber, improving their durability.

The euro is not only the official currency for close to 340 million people in the 19 European countries that make up the Eurozone. It is also used as an official currency in several non-EU countries such as Monaco, Kosovo and Montenegro. Approximately 17 billion euro-denominated banknotes are in circulation right now. They have a total value of roughly 1,000 billion euros.