The invention relates to RMB counterfeit identifying technologies, and provides a counterfeit identifying method and a counterfeit identifying system based on zebra crossing infrared image characteristics. The counterfeit identifying method comprises the steps of A, acquiring an infrared image of RMB and carrying out preprocessing on the acquired infrared image; B, extracting HOG characteristics of the preprocessed infrared image and selecting HOG characteristics which satisfy preset conditions from the extracted HOG characteristics; and C, carrying out counterfeit identifying according to the selected HOG characteristics. The counterfeit identifying method based on the zero crossing infrared image characteristics acquires a zebra crossing anti-counterfeit image of the RMB by adopting infrared light, and carries out processing and identifying on the zebra crossing anti-counterfeit image by using an improved HOG and a support vector machine, thereby being capable of effectively eliminating noise effects and improving the performance of infrared image counterfeit identifying, and being capable of improving the accuracy in counterfeit identification for authentic and counterfeit banknotes.