Citizens hide money in case of emergency situations. In 2024, authorities recovered a record €1.7 million in banknotes that were not fit for circulation.
Burying money is the main reason why, over the last decade, the Bank of Portugal has had to replace 317,000 damaged banknotes worth around €13.8 million that have been handed in by people who want to recover their value.
“The notes are ruined by humidity and most of them are ruined by people burying the notes in the ground. And then the humidity of the earth plus insects cause the banknote to deteriorate,” José Luís Ferreira, coordinator of Banco de Portugal’s cash operational area, told Euronews.
Although in most cases it is buried, people’s creativity when it comes to hiding money knows no bounds. Some people hide their money away in microwaves, fireplaces or even septic tanks.
For José Luís Ferreira, this practice can be associated with a lack of trust in banks or a way of having cash on hand in an emergency situation.
“People think that hiding banknotes will protect their personal valuables from theft and other natural catastrophes. And this practice continues to carry a lot of weight among less literate people,” he says.
In 2024 alone, more than 40,000 banknotes were valued, mainly €20 notes (19,983) and €50 notes (11,993), totalling more than €1.7 million, the highest value since 2014.
The structure of cash circulation in Portugal affects the way people build up their savings and their store of value.
This is evident by the number of €20 notes that have increased in value.
As for the €50 note, “it’s possible that this may be justified by the fact that people prefer to store value in larger denomination notes and thus reduce the space needed to store them,” explains the coordinator of the central bank’s cash operational area.
Pandemic increased the amount of buried cash
Since 2014, the year with the highest number of surrendered banknotes was 2022, with a total of 40,954 (the equivalent of €1.5 million). The reason for this is directly linked to the COVID-19 pandemic, as during this period the store of value increased.
Once the pandemic was over, people who had stored valuables at home that had deteriorated went to the Bank of Portugal to exchange them.
José Luís Ferreira also remembers 2018 as a peak year for banknote recovery services, due to the tragic fires at the end of 2017. That year, around 32,000 banknotes were recovered, totalling €1,751,220.
One of the situations, describes the head of the Bank of Portugal, was that the owner of a wood sawmill in the centre of the country, who depended on the money in a safe to pay his workers’ wages, caught fire. 40,000 euros were at stake.
How are requests for banknote valuation analysed?
The criteria for valuing banknotes are standardised at a Eurozone level. This means that all the central banks of the countries that have joined the euro are obliged to fulfil the same criteria.
“The fragments that make up a banknote must add up to more than 50% of the banknote. And these fragments have to make it possible to identify that they belong to genuine banknotes. It is in these fragments that our technicians, who are prepared and use specific equipment for this purpose, can look for the security elements that allow them to assess whether that fragment is part of a genuine banknote or not,” explains José Luís Ferreira.
To do this, the team of technicians relies on the help of software developed in Portugal that quickly analyses the size of the piece of banknote handed over in relation to the total surface area. The device is able to add up several fragments and find out what percentage of the banknote is left.
In order for the amount to be returned, it is also necessary to prove that the reason for the poor condition of the money corresponds to the description of the person who handed it in, since in the case of fraud there may be no refund.
There are also those who try to deceive the technicians in order to make some money through forgeries. If it turns out that the notes are not genuine, the information is passed on to the relevant authorities and the money is seized.
“We’ve often received letterheads here, some more sophisticated, others less so, claiming that they were notes that had been damaged, trying to mask the forgery or counterfeiting in the deterioration of the note. But it’s difficult for them to pass through our processes. They are very robust control processes and I can guarantee, with complete certainty, that we manage to isolate and filter out all these attempts to deceive the bank into paying the notes,” assures the coordinator of Banco de Portugal’s cash operational area.
