10 Rupees

Nepal's 2002 polymer 10 Rupees was one of the earliest polymer issues from the subcontinent, printed by Note Printing Australia at a time when NPA was aggressively marketing Guardian substrate technology to smaller Asian central banks. Nepal had been accustomed to cotton-paper notes from the Security Printing Works in Nasik, so the shift to polymer — even for a single low denomination — was a deliberate test of public and institutional tolerance for the new medium.

The transparent window cut into the substrate serves as the primary security anchor, a feature that proved difficult to counterfeit locally given Nepal's limited reprographic infrastructure at the time.