The new pound coin will enter circulation next month.

The 12-sided £1 coin – dubbed “the most secure of its kind in the world” – will come into circulation on March 28.

The new coin is designed to combat counterfeiters who have around 45 million counterfeit £1 coins currently in circulation.

New security features include a hologram-like image that changes from a £ symbol to the number one when the coin is seen from different angles. Businesses have been urged to prepare for its introduction.

Cash-handling firms and those that operate vending machines have been directed to a website - thenewpoundcoin.com - to help guide them through the transition as part of a campaign before the Royal Mint and the Government take the circular 30-year-old pound coin out of circulation.

You have until October 15 to spend any old £1 coins.

According to coin collecting blog Change Checker, some of the old £1 coins could be worth up to as much as £50.

They recently published a ‘Scarcity Index’ to help collectors identify the rarest £1 coins with the Edinburgh coin coming out on top. 

Issued in 2011, the coin was part of the 'City Series' depicting four capital cities of the UK. 

The motto of the City's arms NISI DOMINUS FRUSTRA - translated as 'it is vain without the Lord' - is inscribed on the edge of the £1 coin.

Upgrades to machines that accept the pound coin are expected to cost millions.

Borough of Poole (BOP), which operates more than 100 pay and display machines, estimates that the cost of carrying out software upgrades to their machines will run into the region of £25,000.

Meanwhile, Bournemouth council - which operates around 200 machines - believes the cost of configuring their parking machines to be around £7,000.

While machines at car parks in West Dorset, Weymouth and Portland, North Dorset and Purbeck will not need to be replaced in preparation for the new coin, they will need a software recalibration – at a cost of £110 per machine for all councils except Purbeck, for which it will cost £95 per machine.

A spokesman for Dorset County Council, which looks after on-street parking, said it too would need to update the software on its machines, but that it would be difficult to estimate a cost due to maintenance work being carried out on machines at the same time.