A coin counting machine is a machine that counts money, whether it be stacks of banknotes or loose collections of coins. Counters can be purely mechanical or use electronic components. The machines typically provide a total count of all the money, or count the specific batch sizes to wrap and store.
Currency counters are commonly used in vending machines to determine how much money has been deposited by customers. In some modern ATMs, currency counters allow cash deposits without envelopes, as they can identify which bills have been inserted instead of just how many. The user has the opportunity to review the idea of the automatic counter of the quantity and types of tickets inserted before the deposit is completed.
Basic banknote counters provide a total count of banknotes in the supply hopper. More advanced accountants can identify different billing denominations to provide a total currency value of mixed bills, including those that are upside down. Some bill counters can also detect fake bills, either magnetically and / or black. Blacklight (UV) based detectors exploit the fact that in many countries, real notes have fluorescent symbols in them that are only displayed under a black light. In addition, the paper used to print money does not contain any of the brightening agents which make the commercially available papers fluoresce under black light. Both features make counterfeit notes easier to detect and harder to produce successfully.
A stack of bills are placed in a compartment of the machine, and then an invoice at a time is pulled mechanically through the machine. By counting the number of times a beam of light is interrupted, the machine can count the bills. When comparing an image of each bill with pattern recognition criteria, the machine can calculate the denominations of the bills and the amount of genuine money that was placed in the compartment.