The Reserve Bank of India has made a proposal to come up with a mobile app for enabling visually impaired to identify bank notes. Currently, the currency under circulation includes bank notes in the following denomination such as Rs. 1, Rs. 10, Rs. 20, Rs. 50, Rs. 100, Rs. 200, Rs. 500 and Rs. 2000.

In the current regime, the intaglio printing-based identification marks that help impaired population with the identification of currency is featured in currency notes of denomination Rs. 100 and above.

"The application should be able to identify the denomination of legal tender banknotes of Mahatma Gandhi Series and Mahatma Gandhi (New) series by capturing the image of the notes placed in front of a mobile camera or scrolled across it," said the request for proposal issued by the central bank. The central bank has invited bids from technology concerns for developing such an app.

Further, the app should be available for download via the voice option on all of the app stores. "The mobile application should be able to identify the banknote denomination in 2 seconds or less," the RBI said and added that the app should also work in offline mode without an internet connection.

Further, the mobile application shall provide multi-lingual support as well as audio notifications. The application is expected to support Hindi and English language as a minimum, it said.

The move is expected to benefit as many as 80 lakh blind or visually impaired people in the country.

GoodReturns.in