INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS;A Bank Note, So Very Swiss and Computer-Drawn

The Swiss central bank has given the ordinary cash-paying Swiss the first of a new series of bank notes so technologically advanced that it has become a Swiss parlor game to spot the more than 20 anti-counterfeiting features.

The 50-franc bill is the world's first digital bank note -- designed on a computer that resolves its design into 2.5 billion points, each of them individually accessible electronically. There is a raised triangle at one end to assist the blind and a number of official seals and figures that dance around on the face of the note like holograms.

Because studies showed that the currency is mostly passed by people who are standing, its design is largely vertical like other Swiss notes, instead of horizontal like the American dollar.

If the United States Bureau of Engraving and Printing, which begins issuing a fresh series of American notes later this year, starting with a new $100 bill, has produced a jeep -- a kind of a tough, all-terrain monetary vehicle -- the Swiss have produced the Rolls-Royce of currencies.

Both their note and the new American $100 bill feature a numeral in variable color ink that will veer from green to black when tilted, and fine line print that yields a blur when photocopied.

In part, the Swiss series is intended to thwart the threat of forgery from color photocopying -- though the Swiss franc is rarely counterfeited.