In a surprise announcement last evening, Prime Minister Narendra Modi scrapped the ₹500 and ₹1,000 currency denominations. He also announced that a new ₹2,000 rupee note will be introduced into circulation. Later, a Reserve Bank of India (RBI) team showed off the new note at a press conference.
Soon after these announcements, a WhatsApp forward began doing the rounds, stating that the new ₹2,000 note will have a location tracker that employs Nano GPS Chip (NGC) technology. The message said.
*why RBI is issuing ₹2000 Rupees Notes *
The Rs 2000 currency is designed keeping in mind to eradicate the black money issues using state of the art indigenous nano technology, every Rs. 2000 currency note is embedded with a NGC (Nano GPS Chip)
How the embeded NGC Technology Works?
The unique feature of the NGC is it dosent need any power source. It only acts as a signal reflector. When a Satellite sends a signal requesting location the NGC reflects back the signal from the location, giving precise location coordinates, and the serial number of the currency back to the satellite, this way every NGC embedded currency can be easily tracked & located even if it is kept 120 meters below ground level. The NGC cant be tampered with or removed without damaging the currency note
Well, the WhatsApp message is baseless. The RBI released a press note containing details of all the new features of the ₹2,000 note, along with its new magenta colour based design. There will be no GPS tracking chip inside the currency note, and the tweets and WhatsApp messages that say otherwise are just wrong.
The RBI also tweeted out the details of the new ₹500 and ₹2,000 currency notes.
Neither tweet makes any mention of advanced location trackers.