Unusual notes and coins/wages paid in cash discussion

Uncle Buck · 13 Jun 2026

Springs Branch said:
Much easier travelling these days. I no-longer pre-purchase cash - mostly I use a multi-currency Wise contactless debit card and, if I do need a small amount of ££ cash (say for a haircut) I can withdraw what I need from an ATM without usurious bank fees.

When I was in a large Marks and Spencer’s recently I was surprised to see it still had a travel money desk, with one person sitting on it. Surely this is no longer in sufficient demand?

Springs Branch said:
Speaking of haircuts: Despite their relative rarity, I wonder how much of the big wedge of cash paid into the bank by the local Turkish Barber is made up of £50 notes which clients had proffered to pay for their 'haircuts' that day?

It would be especially interesting to divide the cash takings by the price of one haircut in order to calculate how many “haircuts” had been bought that day. “Wow, this deserted shop on a rundown high street sure is a busy place!”

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spyinthesky · 13 Jun 2026

The oddest way to be paid had to be Military training my first wage I had to beg for.
March up to the desk where the Troop Captain sat and the Sergeant Major stood.
Halt and salute and say Number Rank and name and wait for the Sergeant Major to either say “Get to the back” (Of the queue) or inspect your appearance and either say “Get to the back” or “Pay due, sir”
With 50 of us there the first week the pay parade lasted most of the morning with barely anyone remembering their 8 digit number with all the shouting.
As I started at the back alphabetically it was a long while till I got my tenner, after which we were marched to the barbers to offload 10% of that immediately.
After six weeks there were only 24 of us left.

Shaw S Hunter · 13 Jun 2026

Springs Branch said:
One niche manifestation of the £50 note “problem” is (or was) for tourists and overseas visitors to the UK.

Less of a problem these days, but in the recent past - when fee-free international credit & debit cards were not so easy to come by - the cheapest currency option for a traveller coming to Britain tended to be to buy Sterling banknotes overseas before leaving home (e.g. from the Post Office or your local bank) and use these for most day-to-day purchases on arrival.

Problem was, whoever you used to get your £ notes, invariably they supplied the majority in crisp, brand-new £50s. Even ordering an odd amount (say £495) didn't help a great deal as you only got a couple of smaller notes.

The explanation offered was that Bank of England only supplied overseas banks with wrapped packets of new, uncirculated £50s by secure courier, so there was never much of a supply of smaller notes.

Very true. When I was a conductor the few times I dealt with £50 notes were always when working trains from Manchester Airport and selling tickets to newly arrived visitors from overseas, mostly Chinese.

Working in retail now I see £50 notes often enough that I no longer consider them unusual and certainly not rare. I suspect those who assert otherwise live in a metropolitan bubble where cash is indeed uncommon. But when your local demographic includes rural residents, especially farmers, cash remains a vital payment method for plenty of them and inflation has made £50 notes an essential part of the currency.

Springs Branch · 14 Jun 2026

Uncle Buck said:
When I was in a large Marks and Spencer’s recently I was surprised to see it still had a travel money desk, with one person sitting on it. Surely this is no longer in sufficient demand?

Mention of M&S reminded me of one essential factor, back in the day, when working out how many £ notes to bring along on my trip to Britain.

At that time, Marks & Spencers were still a reliable source of robust, good quality St Michael-brand underpants, socks & sensible business shirts. Whenever I made a periodic visit, I would stock up, as these items were always a better price/quality proposition than what I could buy at home.

The downside was that M&S only accepted their own in-house charge card. Visa, Mastercard etc. were strictly verboten. Each time I would moan to the sales assistant about this ("I'd probably buy double the amount if you accepted my credit card") and received a response along the lines of 'tell somebody who cares' - but very politely! That was the cue to pull out a couple of my brand new, uncirculated £50 notes - even if I had smaller more appropriate notes in my wallet.

This is one problem that's gone away - M&S now accept conventional credit cards, but the quality of their underwear and shirts is so mediocre it's definitely not worth my bother going there to stock up.

najaB · 14 Jun 2026

Uncle Buck said:
When I was in a large Marks and Spencer’s recently I was surprised to see it still had a travel money desk, with one person sitting on it. Surely this is no longer in sufficient demand?

They're still useful, people still like to have some foreign cash for things like taxis that might not take card payments and you'll get better rates at your local M&S than at the airport when you arrive.

barringtoncem · 14 Jun 2026

I also had my first jobs paid in Cash as well as having to go and wait in line when in the reserve forces and then halt and salute the officer and state your army number to recieve your pay packet

The exile · 15 Jun 2026

Uncle Buck said:
When I was in a large Marks and Spencer’s recently I was surprised to see it still had a travel money desk, with one person sitting on it. Surely this is no longer in sufficient demand?

Given the fact that the company trades internationally, all of the back office functions will be required anyway. There’s probably just about enough demand to make it wash its face still. Many travellers will still want a bit of cash on arrival, even if they end up doing everything by card - though their number (and the necessity) will be decreasing.

Egg Centric · 25 Jul 2026

najaB said:
I find that *very* surprising. For it make sense for the machine to have £50 notes, the average withdrawal would need to be well over £100. These days I'm willing to bet that most people take less than £50 at a time. I certainly can't remember the last time I took more than £40 in one go.

I was interested in this as it's the opposite of what I do. l tend to take out £200 and carry it my wallet for emergencies or places that only take cash and it usually lasts at least a couple of months, maybe more. My intuition was that most ATM users were using them similarly so accounting for smaller amounts the average was likely closer to £100.

So I took a look and apparently the average amount withdrawn in 2025 was £92 - see https://www.link.co.uk/news/average-uk-adult-withdrew-1-352-from-atms-in-2025 - Interestingly as well the North East of England (where I live) withdrew the most per capita in Britain, although Northern Ireland was significantly more, which anecdotally lines up with how you do need cash up here in various places still whereas say in London you can exist entirely without.

I appreciate stats will be skewed a bit and the median is lower than the mean but probably not by *that* much - most bank accounts tend to limit to £500 (appreciate some are more) and most non-bank ATMs ime limit to much less than this, £200 often being the limit.

Old Yard Dog · 26 Jul 2026

I remember stuffing loads of Belgian 5 and 20 BEF coins into ticket machines before the Euro made them obsolete. The Belgians only had 4 coins and 2 of them were exceedingly similar in colour and size.

It makes me think that Euro coins must have been designed by a Belgian. 7 of the 8 are similarish in size and colour, at least round the edges. Britain’s 8 coins, on the other hand, are very easy to tell apart.

The exile · 26 Jul 2026

Old Yard Dog said:
I remember stuffing loads of Belgian 5 and 20 BEF coins into ticket machines before the Euro made them obsolete. The Belgians only had 4 coins and 2 of them were exceedingly similar in colour and size.

Reminds me of a trip to St Petersburg in the Yeltsin era when £1 was about 9500 rubles and the largest denomination coin was 50 rubles. Cant remember whether the metro had gone over to using telephone tokens or vice versa, but counting out 15 x 100 ruble notes as the standard tip to use a public loo was surreal (as was the state of some of those - both the toilets and the 100 ruble notes )
Only time in my life when I’ve been a cash millionaire.

Egg Centric · 26 Jul 2026

The exile said:
Reminds me of a trip to St Petersburg in the Yeltsin era when £1 was about 9500 rubles and the largest denomination coin was 50 rubles. Cant remember whether the metro had gone over to using telephone tokens or vice versa, but counting out 15 x 100 ruble notes as the standard tip to use a public loo was surreal (as was the state of some of those!)
Only time in my life when I’ve been a cash millionaire.

I've been a cash trillionaire more than twice over with Zimbabwe dollars (I had 50 x 50 billion notes). Which incidentally was worth far less than your million rubles :lol:

Only time I've ever seen a note with an expiry date on it.

PeterC · 27 Jul 2026

The exile said:
Given the fact that the company trades internationally, all of the back office functions will be required anyway. There’s probably just about enough demand to make it wash its face still. Many travellers will still want a bit of cash on arrival, even if they end up doing everything by card - though their number (and the necessity) will be decreasing.

With the number of bank branch and post office closures they may well be getting a bigger slice from a smaller cake

The exile · 27 Jul 2026

PeterC said:
With the number of bank branch and post office closures they may well be getting a bigger slice from a smaller cake

Especially from people who can only / find it more convenient to get “into town” at weekends.

Yew · 27 Jul 2026

johntea said:
Interestingly I think the €50 note in Europe is about as popular as a £20 note here!

I do find it odd, as one would have expected that with inflation, we would have seen £50s becoming more normalised.

For example, the average cost of a pint in 2000 was ~1.90, whereas now it's ~4.91. (here's a graph, for those interested https://beerandpub.com/data-statistics/beer-prices/), yet most pubs these days would turn down the note that is currently worth about 10 pints - but would have thought nothing at taking a £20 in 2000.

najaB · 27 Jul 2026

Yew said:
For example, the average cost of a pint in 2000 was ~1.90, whereas now it's ~4.91.

Thank goodness I don't go to the pub very often!

The exile · 27 Jul 2026

Yew said:
I do find it odd, as one would have expected that with inflation, we would have seen £50s becoming more normalised.

For example, the average cost of a pint in 2000 was ~1.90, whereas now it's ~4.91. (here's a graph, for those interested https://beerandpub.com/data-statistics/beer-prices/), yet most pubs these days would turn down the note that is currently worth about 10 pints - but would have thought nothing at taking a £20 in 2000.

That inflation has been paralleled by the move towards non-cash payments, so there’s been a lot less public and operational pressure for ATMs to dispense £50s. If we were still on cash / cheques I suspect they’d be dispensing £100 notes by now (yes, I know… but there would be - even in England & Wales!)

Cross City · 27 Jul 2026

I feel like I'd use cash more often if the amount of coins we had was massively cut down. £1 notes, 25p and 10p coins. No need for anything else, and nobody wants to carry around a pocket full of heavy and bulky shrapnel.

The size of our notes should be much smaller too, the £20 note is comically large, let alone the £50. £1 notes in my hypothetical scenario should be about the same size as a credit card, then each denomination up should be 0.5cm wider (but no taller).

The argument for having £1 notes phased out originally was that coins latest much longer, that problem has largely been negated with the introduction of polymer notes.

Alas, none of that will never happen and I'll just continue to refuse to use cash like I have done since pre-Covid.

WAB · 27 Jul 2026

The exile said:
That inflation has been paralleled by the move towards non-cash payments, so there’s been a lot less public and operational pressure for ATMs to dispense £50s. If we were still on cash / cheques I suspect they’d be dispensing £100 notes by now (yes, I know… but there would be - even in England & Wales!)

And might we have been approaching the issuing of £5 coins into general circulation?

najaB · 27 Jul 2026

Cross City said:
The size of our notes should be much smaller too, the £20 note is comically large, let alone the £50. £1 notes in my hypothetical scenario should be about the same size as a credit card, then each denomination up should be 0.5cm wider (but no taller).

In a lot of countries different value notes are all the same size, and it seems to work fine for them.

tutacre · 27 Jul 2026

I think we will see the end of cash before my idea - but a £30 note would arguably be more useful these days than (or as an addition to) the £20.

If £50 were more widely available, I think they would actually be popular as they'd start to become more readily accepted by retailers too.

I suspect a lot of the current constraints are simply down to cash machine technology and cash machine supply chains, although £5 notes do appear in some cash machines these days.

The exile · 27 Jul 2026

WAB said:
And might we have been approaching the issuing of £5 coins into general circulation?

Probably

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 27 Jul 2026 ==

najaB said:
In a lot of countries different value notes are all the same size, and it seems to work fine for them.

Would, I suspect, (and quite rightly if so) fall foul of disability regs. Having notes a distinctly different size probably doesn’t help as much as the distinct varieties of coin, but must make them easier to distinguish.

najaB · 27 Jul 2026

The exile said:
Would, I suspect, (and quite rightly if so) fall foul of disability regs. Having notes a distinctly different size probably doesn’t help as much as the distinct varieties of coin, but must make them easier to distinguish.

Polymer notes of different colours with different patterns of raised dots (as they currently do) would probably meet the requirements.

35B · 27 Jul 2026

Yew said:
I do find it odd, as one would have expected that with inflation, we would have seen £50s becoming more normalised.

For example, the average cost of a pint in 2000 was ~1.90, whereas now it's ~4.91. (here's a graph, for those interested https://beerandpub.com/data-statistics/beer-prices/), yet most pubs these days would turn down the note that is currently worth about 10 pints - but would have thought nothing at taking a £20 in 2000.

I'm not so surprised - payment with a £50 note generates a need for a lot of change (even just notes), and is a significantly increased fraud risk. As an individual, it's also inflexible until broken down into change. Carrying more £10 and £20 notes makes a lot more sense and is little extra burden most of the time.

sprunt · 27 Jul 2026

35B said:
I'm not so surprised - payment with a £50 note generates a need for a lot of change (even just notes), and is a significantly increased fraud risk.

Assuming by fraud risk you mean the risk of forgeries then it isn't really - the Bank of England figures show orders of magnitude more forged £10s and £20s than £50s.

Banknote statistics

There are over 4.98 billion Bank of England notes in Circulation. Together they are worth about £91.5 billion

www.bankofengland.co.uk

(This may of course be a function of their being less widely accepted, and would probably change if they were more widely accepted, but as things stand now a business shouldn't really be at any more risk from accepting them.)

35B · 27 Jul 2026

sprunt said:
Assuming by fraud risk you mean the risk of forgeries then it isn't really - the Bank of England figures show orders of magnitude more forged £10s and £20s than £50s.

Banknote statistics

There are over 4.98 billion Bank of England notes in Circulation. Together they are worth about £91.5 billion

www.bankofengland.co.uk

(This may of course be a function of their being less widely accepted, and would probably change if they were more widely accepted, but as things stand now a business shouldn't really be at any more risk from accepting them.)

That misstates the risk by only dealing with one facet of it. The other two facets are staff awareness of what a "good" note looks like due to unfamiliarity, and the additional losses if one is accepted.

Taking my standard use case, I help run an annual event. Most payments are £10-£15. If we accept a dodgy note, we lose the face value of the note and a small amount of change. For a payment of £15, that's a loss of £25 (i.e. the face value of the note(s) plus the change). Up the note size to £50, the loss more than doubles to £55.

Locally, and anecdotally, banks have rejected £50s. I forget when we last had a £10 or £20 rejected.

Mcr Warrior · 27 Jul 2026

35B said:
Most payments are £10-£15. If we accept a dodgy note, we lose the face value of the note and a small amount of change. For a payment of £15, that's a loss of £25 (i.e. the face value of the note(s) plus the change).

Surely the loss here is £20 (the £15 item effectively not actually paid for, plus the £5 change given away)? Isn't that correct?

35B · 27 Jul 2026

Mcr Warrior said:
Surely the loss here is £20 (the £15 item effectively not actually paid for, plus the £5 change given away)? Isn't that correct?

No, because the whole of the £20 received is lost when the note is refused at the bank (the point at which, having accepted a dodgy note, the crime is identified). The change given is incremental to that loss, not within the value of it.

Mcr Warrior · 27 Jul 2026

35B said:
No, because the whole of the £20 received is lost when the note is refused at the bank (the point at which, having accepted a dodgy note, the crime is identified). The change given is incremental to that loss, not within the value of it.

Will agree to disagree here. Think you're double counting £5!

You had a £15 item and a genuine £5. Total £20. Now you've got a moody £20 that you've accepted. So, you've lost a total of £20!

35B · 27 Jul 2026

Mcr Warrior said:
Will agree to disagree here. Think you're double counting £5!

You had a £15 item and a genuine £5. Total £20. Now you've got a moody £20 that you've accepted. So, you've lost a total of £20!

If we take your logic, the risk is disproportionate to the value of the purchase, even at a loss of "only" £20 rather than, as I still consider correct, £25.

Now scale that up to a £50 note used for the same transaction. The £15 (in this scenario, an admission charge) is opportunity cost. The £35 handed out is real money, which can be used for other purposes. That loss is immediate, and has multiple impacts - including our ability to provide change to other customers (and let's bear in mind that this cash itself has costs attached to it).

zero · 27 Jul 2026

35B said:
No, because the whole of the £20 received is lost when the note is refused at the bank (the point at which, having accepted a dodgy note, the crime is identified). The change given is incremental to that loss, not within the value of it.

You start off with a float of £100. You only make one cash sale of £15 all day. You would expect to deposit £115 in the bank - ignoring any bank fees and the cost of going to the bank.

If £20 of the £115 is rejected, the bank will credit your account with £95. So your loss is £20.

If £50 of the £115 is rejected, the bank will credit your account with £65. So your loss is £50.

Unusual notes and coins/wages paid in cash discussion

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