New Mobile Application for Currency Notes ID by RBI

While healthcare sector is making best use of mobility solutions and portal services, banks are also on the same path to attain maximum profit and no loss. The recent news came that RBI, the Reserve Bank of India, will bring a mobile application development for visually challenged people to identify the currency notes as cash still is a main mode of transaction.

Currently, banknotes in the denominations of INR 10, 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, and 2000 are used by public along with Re 1 notes which are issued by the center.

It is revealed by the RBI that the banknote ID denomination is a key to the successful completion of cash transactions by the visually impaired people. At present, RBI has used Intaglio printing based ID marks that assist the blinds or visually challenged people in determining the banknote denominations in the notes of around INR 100 and above.

Previous year, a mobile banking app was created for the visually impaired people by three employees of Standard Chartered Bank. The app includes standard keyboard based input and touchscreen based inputs have been overtaken by voice assisted screen navigation and user-friendly gestures.

Although the app design is still in the pipeline and has not been officially used by any bank yet; however, it will soon get adopted by potential banking customers.

At present, there is no such mobile banking app that can assist the blinds or visually impaired ones. Currently, features like tap-based readers and screen readers are available but there is no guarantee of accuracy. Moreover, these features are not really optimized to save effort and time of the user. So, such time consuming and error-prone process is unsuitable for banking operations.

There is a similar app VOICE that is built from ground up with the needs of the blinds in mind, for instance-

• User can tap anywhere over the screen and the app will read out the first option when there will be a first tap, the second option with the second tap and so on
• In the app, users can swipe right for yes and swipe left to cancel/ back/ no the option
• Biometric authentication makes typing a PIN useless
• Using headphones with the app is compulsory for privacy
• Automatic OTP detection
• Banking actions like loan request, balance inquiry, mobile recharge, ATM finder, and even payments can be done with the app at present

App has lingual feature that means it can be linked to the mobile language. So, regardless of which language user speaks on their phone, the app will work in that language. All of these features are intended for mobile application making the app useful for visually impaired and senior citizens and the illiterate.

The implementation of the VOICE mobile application as a significant banking solution is still in a queue.

RBI had come out with a similar ‘request for proposal’ from vendors but cancelled it. It is said that the app that RBI is bringing will have a feature of generating “audio notification” that intimate the currency note denomination to the user after correct capturing of the image. If the user failed to provide readable image, app will notify him to try again.