Machine-assisted authentication of paper currency: an experiment on Indian banknotes

Automatic authentication of paper money is becoming an increasingly urgent problem because of new and improved uses of counterfeits. In this paper, we describe a system developed for discriminating fake notes from genuine ones and apply it to Indian banknotes. Image processing and pattern recognition techniques are used to design the overall approach. The ability of the embedded security aspects is thoroughly analysed for detecting fake currencies. Real samples are used in the experiments that show a high-precision machine can be developed for authentication of paper money. The system performance is reported for both accuracy and processing speed. The analysis of security features to prevent counterfeiting highlights some of the issues that should be considered in designing of currency notes in the future.