Its worse than ASDA here!!

[C-130]

And just to add. All money issued by these banks is actually protected by Bank of England notes such as the titan note 1,000 trillion pound or something that note is worth. issued strictly from the treasurey to back the notes of other banks with value.

[StarsAreFixed]

Pfft, £100 note! I get the rough equivalent a few times a week, €100's are common. Nothing better than opening your till on a Sunday morning (float: €40 in notes, €113 in coins- ie. can barely cope with the incredibly common €50 notes) and taking a sale of €4. Assuming that the note in the customers hand cannot possibly be the GIGANTOR purple €500 note. Oh it is. DIE DIE DIE DIE! Our store accepts them, no other store will and they're banned in some countries. I've been forced to take €500's about 10 times, ALL for sales of less than €50. All of these customers are foreign as the note is only available in bureau de changes abroad. ALL of them like amazed that I DO NOT have €400 odd to give them back to them and impatient because I have to get a manager to change it in the safe. Get a clue! Just because it's available does not mean you hand it into a shop that would need to be open an hour to cope with that amount.

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

Depends what you mean by "legal" currency.

You can trade with anything you want. Any bank or post office will always take the scottish notes etc.

But the currency as named above should be accepted towards a debt. Refusing it as payment towards a debt would pretty much make it impossible to later collect on the debt. To that extent it must be accepted.

However a shop can refuse payment if it wants because it isn't towards payment of a debt. The contract is being entered into at the point the money changes hands and the shop can refuse for any reason (that isn't discrimination).

So - shop policy in this instance.

Victoria J

That's interesting because here in the U.S. all bills state something like "This note is legal tender for any debt, public or private" BUT businesses are well within their rights to refuse to accept $50 and $100 bills and, due to counterfeiting, many do just that.

[Golden Phoenix]

Sorry, I was thinking in terms of coins worth £20. I have no clue what you've got in notes and what you have in coins there.

For future reference fo our non-UK brethren:

Coins:

1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2.

Notes

£5, £10, £20, £50, £100. Other notes exist in theory.

I don't think i have ever actually seen a £100 note. I've taken several £50's in my time as a cashier but never anything higher.

[dalesys]

For future reference fo our non-UK brethren:
...

Your old money was so much more fun. What I can remember (no google-fu):
farthing, ha'penny, penny, thripny, sixpence, shilling, pound, sovereign...

With one of those old pence, by George, you had a coin!

[RayvenQ]

For future reference fo our non-UK brethren:

Coins:

1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, 50p, £1, £2.

Notes

£5, £10, £20, £50, £100. Other notes exist in theory.

£1,000,000 and £100,000,000, though those are only ever used internally within the bank.

[Andara Bledin]

Pfft, £100 note! I get the rough equivalent a few times a week, €100's are common. Nothing better than opening your till on a Sunday morning (float: €40 in notes, €113 in coins- ie. can barely cope with the incredibly common €50 notes) and taking a sale of €4. Assuming that the note in the customers hand cannot possibly be the GIGANTOR purple €500 note. Oh it is. DIE DIE DIE DIE!

Are things that much more expensive over there?

We never see $500 bills. I'm not even sure they're in circulation any more. And the only time you see $100 bills is when someone gets a bunch to pay cash for a high ticket item or to buy a money order (for things like rent and down-payments where cash isn't accepted), or when some douchebag wants to empty someone's float first thing in the morning to show off what a bigshot they are (and just how empty their lives and trousers are). $50 bills aren't much more common.

^-.-^

[Chromatix]

I believe ATMs in the UK only issue up to £50 notes, and then only if you withdraw a sufficiently large amount to justify it. That probably applies to the Scottish and Northern Irish ATMs too. OTOH they've pretty much stopped issuing £5 notes from ATMs, which is mildly annoying since the only £5s I then get to handle have been in circulation for ages and are often a complete wreck.

I believe I've used €100 and maybe even €200 notes at some point. However, I didn't use them in a shop - I was using them to pay off my dad. He's sensible enough to use them sanely.

Oh, and I believe the pre-decimal coins used within the 20th century included: farthing, ha'penny, penny (1d), tuppence, threepence, sixpence, shilling (1s = 12d = 5p), two-shillings, half-crown (2s 6d), possibly the crown (5s = 25p), and the Gold Sovereign (21s, or £1 1s).

The Sovereign is still in use as a small type of gold bullion, and is worth *much* more than £1 now instead of only slightly more - it was always a fairly large amount of money, the change in numbers is just inflation at work.

The other coins have all been withdrawn and replaced by decimal coinage, though the shilling and two-shilling coins were allowed as substitutes for the identically-sized 5p and 10p coins for quite a while until smaller versions of those coins were issued.

Some people still keep a sixpence around as one of the more readily available true silver coins - it can therefore be baked into cakes safely for traditional purposes. *Don't* try that with a copper, nickel or brass coin, which virtually all are these days.

[Cazzi]

OTOH they've pretty much stopped issuing £5 notes from ATMs

I know of at least one branch of the "black horse that merged with another bank" that has lovely crisp fivers in the inside branch ATM You can guess which is my ATM of choice even though I don't bank there

[Magpie]

The only time I've heard of an ATM giving out $5 bills is the one on my mom's college campus. Heck, we have ATMs on the university campus here, and all they give out is 20s, just like every other one I've ever come across. This whole "choice of notes" is a really cool idea, making for a very jealous Magpie.

[AccountingDrone]

Are things that much more expensive over there?

We never see $500 bills. I'm not even sure they're in circulation any more. And the only time you see $100 bills is when someone gets a bunch to pay cash for a high ticket item or to buy a money order (for things like rent and down-payments where cash isn't accepted), or when some douchebag wants to empty someone's float first thing in the morning to show off what a bigshot they are (and just how empty their lives and trousers are). $50 bills aren't much more common.

^-.-^

We had a roomie who paid us his rent in $100s which worked out nicely as we did about $100 a week in groceries so it worked out. His rent paid our groceries

[RayvenQ]

I believe ATMs in the UK only issue up to £50 notes, and then only if you withdraw a sufficiently large amount to justify it. That probably applies to the Scottish and Northern Irish ATMs too. OTOH they've pretty much stopped issuing £5 notes from ATMs, which is mildly annoying since the only £5s I then get to handle have been in circulation for ages and are often a complete wreck.

I believe I've used €100 and maybe even €200 notes at some point. However, I didn't use them in a shop - I was using them to pay off my dad. He's sensible enough to use them sanely.

Oh, and I believe the pre-decimal coins used within the 20th century included: farthing, ha'penny, penny (1d), tuppence, threepence, sixpence, shilling (1s = 12d = 5p), two-shillings, half-crown (2s 6d), possibly the crown (5s = 25p), and the Gold Sovereign (21s, or £1 1s).

The Sovereign is still in use as a small type of gold bullion, and is worth *much* more than £1 now instead of only slightly more - it was always a fairly large amount of money, the change in numbers is just inflation at work.

I've never gotten a £50 note even though i draw all my money out once a week. (£90 at a time though that may be why)

As for Sovereigns, I have two myself, they date around 1600 to 1800's I forget which.

[Chromatix]

£90 can be made of either four £20s and a £10, or one £50 and two £20s. Many ATMs can carry only two types of notes, so it's up to whoever fills it which ones they choose.

[Andara Bledin]

The only time I've heard of an ATM giving out $5 bills is the one on my mom's college campus. Heck, we have ATMs on the university campus here, and all they give out is 20s, just like every other one I've ever come across. This whole "choice of notes" is a really cool idea, making for a very jealous Magpie.

There aren't a lot of ATMs in the US that dispense a variable range of bills, but they're out there. I think with more of them being set up to take cash without needing an envelope, we'll probably be seeing more multi-denominational machines around.

^-.-^

[Magpie]

I think with more of them being set up to take cash without needing an envelope,

Jealousy ++;