Paper currency verifiers

Ok, this is driving me slightly crazy. I nearly always get my gas at a local ARCO- cheapest brand name gas. It costs 50cents or so to use a Debit card, and I am a bit leery anway so I pay with cash.

So, I feed my bill in, and it’s rejected. Some experimentation shows that the reason it is being rejected is that the corner is folded over about 1/4". This has happened numerous times.

Why on earth would a tiny bit of folded corner cause the verifier to reject those bills? :confused:

One of the key, recognizable parts of a bill is the corner, where the denomination is shown. On every corner, both sides, and pretty much the same location on all denominations.

So the machine wants to read that corner. They are set to handle a small torn off at the corner – that’s quite common. But to have the corner folded over means that the machine sees part of the corner missing, and then another part wrong (other side showing, backward). This is too much error, and the machine rejects the bill.

That makes sense, but I am not talking about a 1/2" corner where the amount is covered, I am talking a 1/4" corner which doesn’t reach as far as a number.