Serious Game helps bankers detect fake currency

As custodians of national currency, all banks are expected to ensure that counterfeit currency presented at any customer outlet is identified and removed from circulation.

ICICI Bank, India’s second largest bank, was keen to reduce the amount of counterfeit currency being passed through its counters. The bank faced the challenge of training its new cashiers to identify security features and, at the same time, reduce the continual flow of fake currency.

While most cashiers relied on their instincts and a series of checks against security features, a lack of experience, large volumes of cash and over-dependence on automated counting machines were resulting in a failure to identify all of the counterfeit currency at the bank.

ICICI Bank approached Tata Interactive Systems (TIS) to design and develop a Serious Game using its innovative Game-based Learning Objects (GamBLsTM) methodology to communicate the importance of identifying and isolating all counterfeit currency presented at the bank’s branches.

According to TIS’s Chandra Shekhar Ghildiyal: "TIS’s GamBLsTM methodology enables players to learn and practise concepts, allowing a transfer of knowledge to application. An engaging game structure, combined with apposite illustrations and graphics, creates an apt learning environment which has been shown to involve the learners up to four times more than during a classroom-based training session covering the same subject."

In the game, called ‘Cash Detectives’, the player takes on the role of an intelligence agent. The player’s agency has to track down a terrorist outfit that uses counterfeit currency to finance its agenda.

The introduction presents the player with a task that revolves around a generic, but pressing, issue of evoking patriotic fervour among the target audience. The time-bound game builds a sense of urgency and keeps players on the edge of their seats.

While the game is in progress, the player receives a series of messages about changes to the terrorists’ mission, and each fake bank note detected takes the player closer to tracking down the terrorists.

Cash Detectives aims to train ICICI Bank staff in the three key identification criteria for counterfeit currency. The game allows players to learn up to 14 security features of a genuine note, gain knowledge about tools to be used to ascertain their ‘genuineness’ and gain the experience to detect the absence of one or more of the security features instantly.

"The patriotic storyline helps the bank employees to understand the broader implications of passing counterfeit currency while they learn to identify the visual security features and appreciate the importance of their ‘currency gatekeeper’ role," said Chandra Shekhar Ghildiyal, who leads game-based development at TIS.

"The menace of counterfeit currency and its consequences can only be countered through widespread awareness of the available security features and the ability to identify them. While posters at banks, ATM counters and other strategic locations help spread awareness, a game like Cash Detectives motivates learners with a challenging, yet safe and risk-free environment to continuously practise and perfect their detection skills.

"It is a great way to learn, and TIS is looking forward to continuing to develop similar ‘serious games’ that will help many other organisations in future."

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Notes for editors

About ICICI Bank (www.icicibank.com)

ICICI Bank is India’s second-largest bank with total assets of about US$79bn at 31st March 2007. ICICI Bank has a presence in 17 countries, with India alone having a network of some 950 branches and extension counters and over 3,300 ATMs.

The bank offers a wide range of banking products and financial services to corporate and retail customers through a variety of delivery channels and specialised subsidiaries. Their services cover investment banking, life and non-life insurance, venture capital and asset management.

ICICI Bank has its branches and subsidiaries spread all over the globe and have several International Finance Centers in the USA, United Arab Emirates, China, South Africa, and Bangladesh. In India, ICICI Bank is the most valuable bank in terms of market capitalisation. The bank’s equity shares are listed in India on the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock Exchange of India Limited.

About Tata Interactive Systems (TIS)

Tata Interactive Systems (TIS), a global leader in e-learning, is a part of the $45bn Tata Group. Truly international, TIS has a presence across the US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Japan, India, Amsterdam and mainland Europe. TIS offers corporations, universities, schools, publishers, and government institutions a diversified and innovative bouquet of learning and training solutions including Simulation-based Learning Objects (SimBLs™), Story-based Learning Objects (StoBLs™), courseware and curriculum design, special-needs education, assessments, electronic performance support systems (EPSS), mobile learning, game-based learning along with other corporate training and consultancy services. Our multi-disciplinary expertise and 17 years’ experience across domains helps us design e-learning programmes that are unique to clients’ requirements and specifically crafted to boost knowledge retention and application.

TIS is the only e-learning organisation in the world to be assessed at Level 5 in both the SEI-CMM and P-CMM frameworks. TIS’s quest for excellence is reflected in numerous prestigious industry awards, including a Silver Brandon Hall Excellence in Learning Award 2005 and 2004, APEX Award of Excellence in 2005 and 2006, BETT Awards in 2004 and 2006, and two Business World–NID Design Excellence awards.

For more information log on to www.tatainteractive.com

Further information from:

Sonal Chhaya, Tata Interactive Systems, + 91 22 6643 8133, www.tatainteractive.com
Alan Samuel, Tata Interactive Systems, 00 44 (0) 20 7235 8281, www.tatainteractive.com
Bob Little, Bob Little Press & PR, 00 44 (0) 1727 860405, www.boblittlepr.com