Facts About Indian Currency

* The first coins were minted (made) around 2500 years ago.

* Paper money was first used in China over 1000 years ago.

* The first "rupee” was first introduced by Sher Shah Suri. It was based on a ratio of 40 copper pieces (paisa) per rupee.

* Udaya K Dharmalingam is the designer of the Indian rupee Symbol, which was adopted by the Government of India in 2010.

* From 1953, Hindi was displayed prominently on the new notes.

* The Government of India took over the issue of bank notes in 1861 from the Private and Presidency Banks.

* The first series of coins with theIndian rupee symbol was launched on 8 July, 2011.

* The first 1000 Rs Note was introduced in 2000.

* The Reserve Bank introduced the 20 note in the Mahatma Gandhi series in August 2001.

* Decimalization started in 1957 and the rupee was divided into 100 Naye Paise.

* Total 15 Languages (Apart from English) are printed in Indian Rupee Note. They are Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Panjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu.

* In India, the first paper bank note was published by Bank of Hindustan in 1770.

* The current Mahatma Gandhi series of bank notes stared from 1996 with new series of 10Rs notes.

* Indian coins are produced in 4 cities: Noida, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata. The coins produce from each city puts an identification mark under the year of issue. Coins produced in Noida have a dot mark, Mumbai have diamond mark, Hyderabad have star mark and coin produce from Kolkata have nothing beneath the year.

* Credit cards were first used in the United States in the 1920’s.