[dblooman]

>Very few places accept them

I have heard this since I was a kid, in reality, it isn't true, at least not in London. I have never been refused when presenting a £50, not that I have carried them more than a dozen times. Most places that have issues taking them are small merchants who give away too many notes breaking them, so will often ask for a smaller note. When I was in New York once, I went into a CVS and bought $60 of sweets to bring home, the cashier shouted 'bill check' when i presented a $100 bill, so I guess I look more dodgey in the US.

[gambiting]

Well, I had the opposite experience here in the North East - when my dad came over to visit he had a bunch of £50 notes he got from the cash exchange office and we literally couldn't spend them. He wanted to buy some jewlery for my mum and the store wouldn't take his notes. Few other places around the town wouldn't either. We literally ended up going to the branch of my bank and changing them for £20 notes and suddenly it wasn't a problem anymore.

It's just dumb. UK government should definitely drive a larger adoption of the £50 notes, it's so bizzaire to me that the British population treats their own banknotes like something from the moon.

[StavrosK]

The hell? It's unimaginable to me that places wouldn't accept a 50 EUR bill... Sure, the delivery guy complains a bit if you haven't told them beforehand you need change for it, but any shop is fine to accept it. 100 is less common, though still probably okay, even a 200 will mostly get curious looks, though for a 500 bill they'll need to copy your ID.

[dcminter]

I don't agree that it's dumb - at least not from the government's point of view. High denomination bank notes are very useful for tax evasion. What's in it for them?

[gambiting]

>>High denomination bank notes are very useful for tax evasion

How so? And if this is an actual, real problem...then stop printing them? What's the point of making currency that normal citizens have issues using?

I just don't undestand it on some fundamental level. Where I'm from(Poland)_200PLN(about £40) notes are very common in circulation, and if you were to pay for a 5PLN loaf of bread with a 200PLN banknote I can guarantee literally no one would bat an eyelid. It's a common and completely normal banknote to use.

Yet in UK, where people make more money on average and also buy more expensive things, the £50 is some alien piece of paper that most Brits have never even seen. The only other place which treats its own currency with such disdain is Germany where I saw signs on petrol stations sayng they don't accept 500 Euro notes. Well if you don't, then why even have them? What's the point? The government should be going after all retailers who don't accept any official currency, because that seems like the very basis of working currency system.

[dcminter]

Most Brits pay with debit cards or credit cards. This leaves an audit trail.

https://www.ft.com/content/afe8ed5a-cd10-11e5-986a-62c79fcbc...

I think you're conflating twoo things as well. Retailers don't like high denomination notes because they're more likely to be forgeries (getting change from a low value purchase with a high denomination note is a simple way to launder forged notes)

Governments don't like them because of tax evasion (though they'll call it "anti money laundering because not all upstanding citizens are entirely averse to a spot of cash-in-hand money laundering).

I presume there's just enough demand from business (where using high denomination notes for high value B2B transactions has very low transaction costs) that they still print them, but I would be surprised if they're still around in a decade.

[PeterisP]

The explanation for not accepting 500 eur notes when you generally sell stuff for <100 euros is that you're asserting that your cash drawers won't have 400+eur in cash so you can't ever give out change from a 500.

However, if you're making a jewelry purchase with multiple 50 quid notes, denying them would seem unreasonable.

[boring_twenties]

$100 bills are routinely checked in the US, but almost never refused IME.

[Fern_Blossom]

You can't refuse legal tender as a business in the US. If you suspect counterfeit bills, you need proof (the marker or it lacks some security feature like watermark or strip) and then you're supposed to call the police immediately about it. You can refuse the sale in general... but that's a tricky one left to someone else to answer.

[boring_twenties]

You absolutely can, unless it's being offered to settle a debt.

[galangalalgol]

Can they refuse a valid bill legally?

I have seen places checking $5 bills in some parts of town.

[carmen_sandiego]

Generally, a private business doesn't have to transact with you, so yeah they can just say "no I don't want to sell you this if you're going to use a hundred dollar bill".

Legal tender is only a thing for the settlement of pre-existing debts.

[Fern_Blossom]

No, it's policy in every single chain store to do bill checks on 50s and 100s, regardless of what you look like. Those are the most common counterfeit denominations. Quite a few places do 20s as well. When I worked at an office supply store, the store manager checked our tills at the end of the day, if bills 20 or above didn't have a marker on them, I got in trouble.