[dan-robertson]

The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think, although I don’t know how true that was. So the solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down. Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created. But:

- I don’t really think the problem is forgery. I think it’s that it is annoying for a lot of shops to make change for £50.

- I don’t think the government is particularly interested in making cash more convenient for people (card transactions are easier to track) and wealthy people mostly aren’t interested in carrying around high-value notes as credit cards exist.

[hnlmorg]

In my experience most places were hesitant because they didn't have the change in the cash register. Anywhere busy with a full register accepted £50 notes happily.

edit: to add to that, it used to be that £1 coins were the most forged in sterling cash. I can't say if that's still the case, but at one point it felt like 1 in 3 pound coins were a fake.

[RobertKerans]

Yep, my experience as well. I worked in a busy club all through university, and we never had an issue accepting £50 notes, but at the quiet bar I sometimes worked at we were sometimes hesitant to accept them as it tended to wipe out the float.

Minor, and probably specific to busy bars, but it did come up: there's also the practical issue of where you put a £50 note as there's no space for it in a register. So you kinda shove them at the bottom of another stack, but there's the danger that when you're very busy and handing change back you'd grab it without looking. So always had to tell another staff member there was a £50 in the register, and ideally that register got emptied asap.

[samizdis]

Not quite one in three, but quite a lot. Here's a relevant bit from the Wikipedia page [1] :

> During later years of the round pound's use, Royal Mint surveys estimated the proportion of counterfeit £1 coins in circulation. This was estimated at 3.04% in 2013, a rise from 2.74%.[9][10] The figure previously announced in 2012 was 2.86%, following the prolonged rise from 0.92% in 2002–2003 to 0.98% in 2004, 1.26% in 2005, 1.69% in 2006, 2.06% in 2007, 2.58% in 2008, 2.65% in 2009, 3.07% in 2010 and 3.09% in 2011.[40][41] Figures were generally reported in the following year; in 2008 (as reported in 2009), the highest levels of counterfeits were in Northern Ireland (3.6%) and the South East and London (2.97%), with the lowest being in Northwest England.[42][43][44] Coin testing companies estimated in 2009 that the actual figure was about twice the Mint's estimate, suggesting that the Mint was underplaying the figures so as not to undermine confidence in the coin.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_pound_(British_coin)

[varispeed]

It's also that people don't care much about coins. When I used cash more back in the day, I remember going through my change from time to time and I had coins from all over the world passing as pence coins.

[dspillett]

> it used to be that £1 coins were the most forged in sterling cash

IIRC that is/was only in number though, not total value.

[dspillett]

> The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think

That was what we were told back when I worked in a small shop in a theme park in the late 90s. That combined with the fact that because we rarely saw them people tended to be worse at picking out fakes than they were with smaller denomination notes.

We were to ask people to go to the cash office at the front of the site to have large notes swapped for smaller currency, £10 and lower. The reason we gave the customer (which as you mention had the benefit of also being true, even though I was very much given the impression it wasn't management's primary concern) was that it would take all the change from out tills. We would accept £20s, though the sign up front suggested they be changed first too.

> solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down

The recognisability helps with lower denomination notes though. And taking a forged £50 is more of a hit than taking a forged £10 amongst others.

> Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created.

The solution we are heading towards, more rapidly now due to C19's effects, is cashless. I still have a few coins in my running pouch in case I need to use a non-free public convenience and a few of notes in my wallet just in case the cards fail, but I don't think I've actually used cash at all in the last 12 months and that may remain the case once This is all over (there is a local corner shop that won't take contactless or other card payments for less than £10 - I simply don't go to that shop any more as that is inconvenient for me for single small items so I do without for now or walk further, and for needs >£10 I'll walk further to a larger store with more options anyway).

[londons_explore]

Making Change for a £50 really isn't hard - it's 2 20's and a 10. Those notes that the cash register is probably already full of...

[Symbiote]

This is exactly right: you can easily accept £50 notes, because you almost certainly already have some £20 notes which have no purpose — other than making change for purchases of ≤£30 with a £50.

[notahacker]

> The problem was that £50 notes were most likely forged, I think, although I don’t know how true that was. So the solution surely isn’t to get rid of the notes as that just shifts the forgery to the next note down. Surely instead the solution would be higher valued notes being created

The £50 notes were perceived as "most likely forged" because - in addition to being temptingly large denominations - they're so rare the average person has never used one and doesn't really know what they look like. There's a vicious circle of course: ATMs don't dispense them and banks are unlikely to unless requested because they're not widely accepted. The £20 note doesn't have that problem.

[luckylion]

What do people do then, do they just get lots of 20ies, or are they mostly paying electronically for anything > £20?

We have the a similar issue in Germany, but it's mostly with 200€ notes (and 100€ notes for a small shop, maybe). I've never had anyone even as much as look annoyed to being handed 50€.

[notahacker]

Mostly electronic payments for everything now, but you could fit a lot of twenties in a wallet (or write a cheque to pay a bill) when card payments weren't so widespread.