Pictures of 'new Indonesia banknotes' shared online not legal tender: central bank

The video, which appeared to show three banknotes with the value of 20, 50 and 100 rupiah, was viewed more than 43,000 times in a TikTok post from March 16, 2024.

The post claimed to share the "latest" update from Bank Indonesia, the central bank that has sole authority to issue money in the archipelago. The Indonesian-language caption said in part: "New Money 2024".

A male narrator could be heard in the video saying: "Bank Indonesia officially issued new money or rupiah notes of 1,000 to 100,000 rupiah." He added the central bank removed three zeroes in the new money.

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Screenshot of the false post, taken on March 27, 2024

Indonesia's finance ministry and the central bank have for years been considering to "simplify" the national currency by removing three zeroes from the rupiah in a practice called redenomination (archived links here and here).

The same video was viewed more than 771,000 times in similar posts on TikTok and SnackVideo here and here. 

The image of the purported new money also previously circulated on Facebook in 2020.

However, the video shows illustration designs for Indonesian money presented in 2013.

Not legal tender

Bank Indonesia clarified in a post on social media platform X on March 17, 2024 that the video was a "hoax" (archived link).

"The video circulating is definitely not from Bank Indonesia," it said. "The visuals presented in the video are definitely not the official rupiah circulated by Bank Indonesia."

The bank added it had not started the redenomination process for the rupiah. "The redenomination implementation still needs to see the right momentum and it will not be carried out in the foreseeable future," it said.

Money 'illustration'

Moreover, reverse image searches on Google and Yandex found the banknote images in the clip were previously published in a report by Indonesian outlet Detikcom on January 23, 2013 (archived link).

The report is headlined: "This is the illustration of the redenominated money, 1,000 rupiah becomes 1 rupiah". The picture was also overlaid with text that reads: "ILLUSTRATION".

The first paragraph of the report reads: "The government has started to promote a move to simplify the rupiah but without reducing its value, a.k.a. redenomination. Illustrations of the rupiah for the redenomination transition period and after redenomination have been released."

According to the report, during a public consultation kick-off event, the finance ministry released two new illustration designs: a transitional banknote showing the current design but with three zeroes eliminated from the end, and a redenominated banknote showing a completely different design. 

Indonesia's state news agency Antara also reported on the event, which was attended by then finance minister Agus Marto Martowardojo (archived link).  

Below is a screenshot of the image published by Detikcom, showing the current rupiah (left), the first illustration design (center) and the second illustration with a completely different design (right):

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Screenshot of the image in Detikcom's report (Safrin LA BATU)

The second new design corresponds to the image shared on social media.

Below is a screenshot comparison between the purported rupiah in the false video (left) and the design in Detikcom's article (right):

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Screenshot comparison between the purported rupiah in the false video (left) and the design in Detikcom's article (right)

As of April 3, 2024, there was no trace of the purported new banknotes on Bank Indonesia's website, which displays visuals of all money in circulation in Indonesia (archived link).