Why I got fake currency probably from an ATM and how this can be easily avoided and yet government and regulators don’t deploy such simple solutions to help common man but just put hard to follow guidelines to take undue advantage of it.
All my income is online, so the money that I get are all deposited to the bank account first and then withdrawn from ATM in the form of cash. This is quite common for majority of salaried Indians where the salary gets credited into the bank account and then withdrawn from ATM in the form of cash.
Few months ago I remember I had cash crunch and in the midst of it, I expected some payments to clear but that did not happen and as the credit card payment due date was approaching, I visited the bank branch for depositing some cash that was with me possibly from previous ATM withdrawals.
In the process of depositing the funds, I found that one 500 Rs note was detected as fake by the bank. It was shocking as well as made me nervous.
The bank officials preferred tearing the note off but I requested to give me the note back to me by doing the needed cancellation process and they agreed. The above photo that you see is the actual fake currency note of Rs 500 Rs. After taking the snap, I have torn it off in 2 pieces and you can see the same as well here.
What I Should Have Done to Save 500 Rs?
Once I was done with the cash deposit process with the bank, I started searching about what happens if you get fake currency from ATM and found this article from InvestmentYogi which describes all the details about the process you should be following to avoid the fake currencies getting into your hands. I just could not stop laughing on the law that we have. Bank needs concrete evidence of currency is from an ATM and there is nothing to make such concrete evidence at least for those who even want to be doing it.
Rules are such that जो पकडा गय़ा वो चोर (The one who is caught is thief). As I was depositing the cash in the bank, I had to bear the loss of 500 Rs or else I need to have a strong evidence of the source of this 500 Rs is from an ATM that I am sure no Indian on any given day will have.
Why Can’t We Have a Feasible Solution?
RBI Guidelines are such that I have to check all the notes when withdrawing from an ATM but the problem is I am not an expert at detecting fake currencies. The photo above that you see is fake one but I could not understand why it was fake and when I asked them, they told me that Gandhiji’s photo is not right in the currency where as it looked all fine to me.
Theoretically even if I want to follow the guidelines of RBI I am yet to see any ATM machine where I can check for counterfeit notes. Practically I don’t even count the notes that I get from ATM and I see the same being followed by many (not all some people do count money before leaving ATMs).
The question is why do we need to have such guidelines when we can have a very simple solution. Just make the ATM machine slightly more intelligent.
The Simple Solution that may take Ages for RBI to Implement
The cash counters in the bank do have fake currency note detector cum counter. It means if they are counting your currency on a machine, it automatically detects fake currencies. A machine detected my fake note as well. So when notes are counted and dispatched from ATM, they can be checked for fake as well.
Simple.
The only problem to the above solution is – Bank will have to bear the loss of fake currency notes and not the common man. So don’t expect anything like this being implemented unless RBI forces it to, which I doubt they will. RBI can only make life of an Indian Freelancer more difficult by restricting PayPal as Indian freelancer’s are and were making American’s Jobless.
The best solution for the banks is to leave the fake currency checking on the receiving counter and once the common man holds it loot him.
Final Thoughts
A really simple solution that the Government and regulators will not be able to put into practice to help the common man and so a common man has to keep losing these 500 Rs just for nothing. It is not a big deal for me but it could mean a fortune for someone. On top of that this should have been a loss for the bank.
Share your views about my solution in comments below and if you want to be sharing your experience with fake currency issues, voice them in comments as well.
The bank or agent should check while filling the ATM machines, instead of ATM machines checking the fake notes while dispensing it to the customer. There are so many easy ways to fix this issue, if RBI wants to really safeguard the common man/woman.
Ditto. I had the exactly same thoughts. The current mode of operation Sounds more like a scam. At did the fake not got into the ATM. I am sure some similar machine would have been used to count the notes before putting them in the ATM. So the machine should have detected the fake notes. Looks like the banks are knowingly doing this.
Good thing that you shared your experience here. I think, you could have brought this issue to the RBI official’s attention and sought solution through RTI. You can also engage any social activist through social media to escalate this matter to the top brass! Only such steps will be going to make any changes in India…..!
Ummer
I too have all my money online. I gave 500 rupee note to a vendor who complained that it was a fake note. Totally embarrassed, I came home to find that it was a horrible duplicate and I could not even see that. Since I withdraw money once a month it was easy to find teh source, I realised that I had closed a bank account (Syndicate Bank) and got the remaining money in cash. That was the only different thing I had done in last 12 month. So a nationalised bank gave me a horrible fake note which I cant do anything about since I closed the account there. Now I doubly check every note anyone gives, and prefer only online transactions, no exceptions, no more local buying to avoid issues like these. Better be careful than sorry.
I tore the note and its weird that this incident happened to me since my father is a banker!
Completely agree with you Moin. There are very little chances that people who withdraw cash from bank can hit a fake notes but then it happens and so there needs to be something that needs to be done.
Not sure why ATM machines are not being made more intelligent to check fake currencies before letting cash out?
This post is worth reading and helpful. But one thing is very surprise to me.
Where do our banks receive money from; which our banks load into their ATM machines? They mostly get money from customers and from their own upper branches. Every currency they receive from these sources are subject to check by fake currency detector. If that is the case, how come a note issued by the bank would turn out to be fake? Have you heard about anyone who experienced the same thing like you?
It is very hard to believe that one can get fake currency from bank itself!! Next time we will hear something like this: Some of the money RBI lend to the bank were not original!!
Glad you found it worth reading Salman.
This post is worth reading and helpful. But one thing is very surprise to me.
Where do our banks receive money from; which our banks load into their ATM machines? They mostly get money from customers and from their own upper branches. Every currency they receive from these sources are subject to check by fake currency detector. If that is the case, how come a note issued by the bank would turn out to be fake? Have you heard about anyone who experienced the same thing like you?
It is very hard to believe that one can get fake currency from bank itself!! Next time we will hear something like this: Some of the money RBI lend to the bank were not original!!
Glad you found it worth reading Salman.
Such a pity, we have to live this way. You have rightly pointed out one good solution, but unfortunately we live in a country where we find the govt hardly implementing fool proof solutions. Though, I myself have never come across such situation have heard of lots of such instances and am scared to do hard cash transactions. What i try to do is mostly sticking to online transfers and usage of credit card wherever possible. Once, while selling my used car and booking a new one, what i did was asked the buyer to come to the showroom and handover the amount (5 Lacs) to the new car dealer and get the payment receipt in my name as advance booking amount. This was mainly due to the reason, i am simply scared to do hard cash transactions even for those involving a few thousands. Unending wait for good times and governance still continuing….
5 Lacs as cash payment really really scary. Good solution though Naveen.
It is very difficult to remember which note is taken from whom and to whom we have given. At the time of transactions with bank, if they find any fake note they will tear off. Best solution to come out of counterfeit currency is soft transfer of money by credit card or debit card. Card transactions are to be more popularised.
But you cannot be doing soft transfer all the time. Isn’t it?
Mr SHABBIR BHIMANI thanks for the excellent and simple method of explaining the disaster of a bank customer receiving “FAKE CURRENCY” from a A.T.M. I myself have received a Rs 500 less on one occasion and on another occasion a few hundred rupees less when withdrawing money from an “A.T.M” many years ago.On both occasions i was the loser as the banks didn’t compensate me for the A.T.M error, no fault of mine.As for “FAKE NOTES” , all banks should count their notes on a “COUNTING MACHINE” and later deposit it into the “A.T.M” kiosks for customers.Seems , the bank customer is ultimately being made a scapegoat .
Completely agree with you on this.
RBI ask banks to collect counterfeit notes and give credit to customers
http://www.moneylife.in/article/rbi-ask-banks-to-collect-counterfeit-notes-and-give-credit-to-customers/33696.html
Regards
Col P K Mishra
The biggest problem is they don’t give it and the biggest example is me as they could have just given me 500Rs in my account but that was not the case to be.
I fully agree with you that in our country “one who is caught is thieve”. sorry state of our country. RBI should be hyper active but they are very slow in implementing pro common man agenda. Other solution which I have seen in west & in middle east is that they feed ATMs with notes in serial order, this way easily bank can have record of there notes in their ATMs & a common man can also prove that he got fake note.
Yes that could be a nice solution as well but not sure how feasible it would be to get new notes for every possible ATM.