Banks do their bit to promote use of ₹10 coins as eight-year old rumour comes back

A billboard installed by RBI in Hyderabad to make awareness about legal validity of ₹10 coins.
| Photo Credit: Serish Nanisetti

Enter Aqeeq restaurant at Masab Tank and you are greeted with a dozen posters stuck to the wall about the legality of ₹10 coin. “₹10 coins are legal and can be used for your daily transactions,” says the message put out by HDFC Bank.

On Monday, the Indian Bank began a two-day campaign across its 480 branches in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to change the perception about the legality of ₹10 coin. On Thursday, it was the turn of Central Bank of India that organised a coin mela at its Koti branch to popularise the use of ₹10 coins.

However, the campaign is not limited to offices. Manjunath, who runs an eatery on Shivam Road, is happy that Indian Bank staff are providing ₹10 coins. “Shops and business establishments in this area were given ₹10 coins in return of ₹2,000-₹5,000 cash. Stickers, which speak about the legality of these coins, were also being distributed,’‘ he said, while mentioning about the Indian Bank initiative.

A poster from HDFC Bank shows various versions of ₹10 coins.
| Photo Credit:
Serish Nanisetti

In another part of the city, ₹10 coins continue to be rejected. “I cannot accept the coin. Nobody accepts it,” says a guava seller at Shivrampally village, who is hawking the small fruit at ₹10 each. No UPI either. As a result, a couple had to rummage through their purse to find a ₹20 note and take two guavas instead of one, planned earlier.

Nearly eight years after the ₹10 coin got mired in social media rumour mongering, banks appear to have joined hands with the RBI to make the coinage acceptable to all.

On November 20, 2016, the Reserve Bank of India issued an advisory asking people to accept the ₹10 coin which was being rejected by many traders and shop-keepers after seeing viral social media posts.

“Some less-informed or uninformed people, who suspect the genuineness of such coins, are creating doubts in the minds of ordinary people like traders, and shop-keepers, impeding the circulation of these coins in certain pockets of the country and causing avoidable confusion,” said the press note at that time.

The rumour had started in July 2016, which was triggered by a ₹10 coin in 2008 that did not have the ₹ symbol and instead had 15 splayed petals on the reverse. The RBI clarified that that ₹ symbol was adopted in 2010. But by then, the damage was done.

As on October 11, about 75,979 lakh ₹10 coins were in circulation in the country. To put in perspective, about 2,10,673 lakh ₹5 coins were in circulation at the same time. This, nearly two decades after the first bi-metallic coin was issued in 2005.