Why is the £50 note rare & barely used?
Like, what’s the point of its existence when that denomination is difficult to come by since ATMs don’t disperse them. I mean, will they still refuse a £50 note when paying for a £45 purchase? They go full counterfeit detection mode just because an individual has it despite that being the real one (not fake). Also, why does the Bank of England keep printing more of that when they know people barely use it anyway?
17 replies
When I was at Uni and working part time my boss told me it was because the £50 note was easier to forge so they would want us to check it and ideally not accept it. The explanation of which I accepted without question at the time. LOL I didn't give a shit.
But thinking about it more why would a large denomination be any easy or harder to forge than a lower one?
So I don't know actually.
FWIW, it's not about the note being harder for forge, but people are less familiar with handling them because they are so rarely used, therefore people are less likely to pick up on the clues that it's a fake. A point that's largely moot now considering how few people use cash for anything any more.
Good explanation and just to add, it's probably only slightly more expensive to produce a fake £50 than a fake fiver (materials, effort, etc) but it's worth 10 times as much. It's also the same risk of getting caught but 10 times the result each time
Why not do what other countries do and just make the denominations physically larger as the value increases? Now it’s harder to wash and reprint forgeries. Also if you use different color paper for each denomination you have another way to prevent forgeries of the washing and reprinting kind.
Ummmm....
Yes, downvote for asking why not fix your broken currency. That’ll encourage discussions.
You asked:
I explained why your large bills are easier to forge.
We don't even really have paper money any more, it's all polymer 🤷
Maybe say that instead of downvoting.
Same for you. Votes are public.
All votes are public on all instances.
Lemvotes.org
If they weren’t public, federation wouldn’t work.
British money already is different sizes and printed in different colours.
I guess brits can't read an entire thread since someone already said that.
I guess people from wherever you're from don't understand anything they're talking about before commenting online.
Because historically they were to high to be used much. So many retailers staff were less able to ID fakes. Hence fakes were created.
The. By the mid 2000s as prices got to the point hey were more useful. They were still high enough that card payments became common. So retailers rarely had the till cash to change them.
There’s actually also a few notes of huge denominations like £100,000,000, they’re kept in banks and never enter circulation. I recall it’s something to do with issuing Scottish and Northern Ireland notes, those ones that are still pounds but are issued by places other than the Bank of England.
It's real money, honest.
£50 notes were for rich people to do crime with. If you weren't a rich person doing crime, you didn't need them.
Now rich people crime can be done online, they're even less necessary.
It probably annoys shop keepers as it blows away all their change.