Watermarks
Printed on:
• Orchid, Bird, Ship, and Portrait series all denominations
• 1996 MAS25 $25, 1999 M2 $2, and 2007 CIA40 $20 commemorative notes
Singapore banknotes have always used watermarks as a key security feature. A watermark is a faint image built into the note itself—visible when held up to the light. Unlike printed designs, it isn’t made with ink. Instead, it’s formed during the papermaking process when the material is still wet. A metal stamp presses a design—like a lion’s head or a human face—into the paper, making some areas thinner. These thinner areas let more light through, creating a visible image that’s hard to copy and nearly impossible to add later.
The earliest notes, from the Orchid series, featured a watermark of a lion’s head in side profile. The Bird series kept the lion head but showed it from the front, and this design carried over into the Ship series. The 1996 MAS25 commemorative note, which was printed towards the end of the Ship series, also used the lion’s head seen in the Orchid series, but this time facing a different direction.
A major change came with the Portrait series, which replaced the lion with an image of Yusof Ishak. These notes featured two watermarks: a primary portrait and a secondary watermark of each note’s corresponding tactile identification marks beneath it. The 1999 Millennium note used the same watermark. When Singapore introduced the Portrait polymer notes in 2004, the traditional watermarks could no longer be used due to the plastic material. Instead, a shadow-like image of Yusof Ishak was embedded into the polymer to serve a similar purpose. The 2007 CIA40 $20 used same imitation shadow watermarks. From 2015 onwards, the commemorative notes started omitting watermarks totally, as they relied on other advanced security features.