Patent ID: 8100245

Claim:
A bill recognizing and counting apparatus comprising: a feeding and transporting mechanism configured to feed a plurality of bills placed on a hopper to a transport path one by one and configured to transport the plurality of bills to a stacker or a rejecting unit; a line sensor provided at a predetermined position of the transport path and configured to scan an image of a given bill from the plurality of bills being transported; a denomination determination table in which denomination recognition data is registered for at least one currency; a denomination recognizing unit configured to recognize a denomination of the at least one currency by referring to the denomination determination table; a processing-mode switching unit configured to switch between a denomination recognition mode for the at least one currency that has its denomination recognition data registered in the denomination determination table, and a different currency recognition mode for a currency that has its denomination recognition data not registered in the denomination determination table; a different-currency recognizing unit configured to compare a difference in size between a first bill and subsequent bills with an allowable range when the different currency recognition mode is set, the different-currency recognizing unit being configured to recognize whether a subsequent bill is of a same denomination as the first bill based on a comparison result; and a control unit configured to perform control for guiding one of the subsequent bills to the rejecting unit or to perform control for stopping the feeding and transporting mechanism when the one of the subsequent bills is determined to be a different denomination from the denomination of the first bill by the different-currency recognizing unit.