The Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and National Westminster Bank (NatWest), a retail and commercial bank in the UK, have tied up to launch new accessible debit and savings cards designed for blind and partially sighted customers.

The cards will feature braille markings to ease the identification of separate savings and debit card and will have a notch cut out on the right hand side of the card to aid customers to insert the cards into ATMs and PIN pads correctly.

The new cards, developed in close collaboration with Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB), will also bear large font on the back of the card to make the phone numbers easier to read with all other features of the card remain the same as any usual debit card.

RBS and NatWest’s cards will initially cater to their 15,000 customers registered as blind or partially sighted and will be issued within 48 hours of ordering online or through telephone banking or in person in any RBS and NatWest branch.

RNIB head of Solutions, Strategy and Planning Steve Tyler said: "The very basic requirement of identifying the right card and quickly determining which way the card slots in to a machine or payment system has been solved by this development.

"Simple as it is, creating a card with tactile indicators that identify the card type as well as the way in which it should be used, is an engineering challenge, particularly to ensure that it doesn’t disrupt machinery."

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