Really? I was just looking a Michelin starred restaurant and their tasting menu was 300 euros. I suppose you could pay with three different bills, but it's nice to be able to just carry one as well as smaller bills. An a flagship phone is a lot more, so if you want to buy it in cash, that's another very normal transaction that would a require a large stack that's not able to fit in a wallet.
It's soon to be illegal in most of Europe anyway. Cash payments are capped nearly everywhere nowadays with varying limits (sometimes you can do it but have to fill in a declaration above a certain amount) and there is a draft regulation in the EU which would cap them to 7000€ everywhere if the sender can't be identified.
Seems insurance of the 500 euro note has already ended as it’s mostly used for crime. Kinda hard to imagine people using it anyway; in the U.S. you’re treated like a criminal if you pull out a $100 in shops.
You have a typo, you probably meant issuance, and yes, it was a bit awkward to use because from a point on they needed to photocopy your ID to accept the bill.
I was told a few years back that it was commonly used to pay rent in cash. I certainly had a friend who assumed that second option from the bottom would give him the right amount of money on a cash machine and was very surprised by just how much he took out.