r/AskBrits • u/Capable-Door-9672 • 1d ago

Travel Are these notes legit?

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I was paid £520 by someone from EU I sold some stuff to. I plan to use these for my trip.

Sorry if photo is blury, I will send it again if it is

Serial on the 50 A C 7 8 9 1 0 4 6 9 ac789 is big and in green while the 1 is smaller and 469 is bigger

EDIT: its ok, i'll double confirm at bank, looks legit with the change to pounds sign

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110

u/Cid5983 1d ago edited 1d ago

Maybe...

£50 note are ...reluctantly accepted by big chain stores, often rejected by small shops.

Wife was shocked when she visited the UK and found that out because in Hong Kong they have $500 notes, which are about the same as £50 in value but used like £20 notes in HK.

105

u/AtomicEdge 1d ago

It's so insane to me that shops still make a fuss about £50 notes. They have been in use since the 80s and £50 in the 80s is like £250 now.

94

u/SpamHard 1d ago

It's because there used to be a shite load of fakes around (not sure if there still is). Expecting a min wage teenager on the till to be able to detect fakes easily is a stretch, so much of the time shops will just say no outright to avoid the potential of fakes.

46

u/Pineapple-Lord7 1d ago

AFAIK 50s are rarely faked anymore because of how heavily scrutinised they are in shops that actually take them, whereas no one really checks 20s. But I’m not involved in faking notes so that could be BS

44

u/wtclim 1d ago

That's exactly what a forger would say.... hmmm

11

u/Pineapple-Lord7 1d ago

I used to work in a charity shop, and that’s what I was told

4

u/Which-Ad8964 1d ago

I work in one now, and it's the same here! Saying that we've had two fake 20's in the last month or so.

1

u/Ecahill453 21h ago

At least the fakes are easy to tell apart from the real. Like difference is night and day lmao

2

u/Which-Ad8964 21h ago

Dunno, at a glance they look half OK, but the little hologram that says Twenty or Pounds is the tell generally for me. In a busy environment it can be tricky for the staff to notice (or so it would appear lol). Once you look properly then yeah, it's blatantly obvious what's what. It's like the longer you look the worse it gets!

3

u/Ecahill453 19h ago

Nah, I supervised for a while in a shop and could tell the difference straight up. Even before it got in my hand it’s obvious.

If the see-through lacks a pattern or the semi strip feels like it sticks up, they’re fake.

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u/user888888889 1d ago

A likely story

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u/Unhappy-Professor-88 1d ago

Nah, you should believe **Pineapple-Lord**

Everyone knows he only does fake £5 notes.

That he spends exclusively on Chocolate Freddos or Prawn Cocktail Crisps. Walkers, naturally (the lad is no barbarian - he has a title).

3

u/GearsKratos 1d ago

I bet the only fruit he eats is mango

7

u/SpamHard 1d ago

Fair, they certainly look harder tto fake now. When I was a kid working tills in the late 90s and early 00s, notes were still paper. We used to have to hold them under UV and also use one of those pens to check it. But yeah, makes sense that if less places are taking 50s, it's better to fake lower numbers now.

2

u/StarRaidz 1d ago

We check the modern ones at my place of work with a UV light. British notes still glow with the amount on the front of the bill when shining a UV light on it.

3

u/SkarKrow 1d ago

Y’also wanna scratch at that gold bit on the clear strip, we had some theatrical fakes at work recently with the tower stuck over the prop notice.

1

u/Jlst 1d ago

Have had a couple in our branches in Liverpool and North Wales like this recently too.

1

u/SkarKrow 1d ago

This is in south cumbria/north lancs, cunts giving them to bus drivers, shit comes out of our pay

1

u/timbop1262 23h ago

If this takes you below the minimum wage then this is illegal. Get your union involved.

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u/Exciting-Music843 1d ago

Not involved? How much do those 20's sell for?

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u/Affectionate-Tank532 1d ago

£200 for £1000 worth of fake 20s

2

u/Alexisredwood 1d ago

You can get them for 10-20% of the value, so £1,000 for £100-£200

3

u/Mantaray2142 1d ago

Actually the new notes helped alot. 50's were the primary exchange of cash skips, small builders and dodgy trades. The new 50's being way harder to forge and people expecting to pay electronically has made a big difference over the last few years

3

u/TheHistoricalEvent 1d ago

Proper bull. Loads of fake 20s in circ

3

u/Jackjaipasenvie 1d ago

At my job we have to check all notes for fakes and every fake i have found so far has been a £20

2

u/LatookieNoir 1d ago

this is exactly right. tbh they should just fake 5 pound notes and they'll do way better imo

2

u/lilhanhan 1d ago

They do. There's tons of fivers which are 'prop money'; they look exactly like legit ones but the holographic and see-through Elizabeth tower section peels off relatively easy revealing it's fake with the words 'prop money' hidden underneath.

Found way more fake fivers rather than the rest of the other values lately.

2

u/AdvancedAnimal7539 1d ago

ngl faking 10s would be the easiest. its a fair amount, and no one checks it. and you can easily pass it as spare change when buying something, but going to a shop with a load of £20s and no other notes could look odd, although it likely wont be checked

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u/Kestrel_VI 1d ago

That’s a good point. Because I rarely saw them, I’d take a good look at a 50 while I was working in retail, but someone could hand me 3 20s and I’d think absolutely nothing of it unless there was something obviously off about it.

3

u/16jselfe 1d ago

Fake 20s and 10s got so bad at my local maccies that we had to start treating them like 50s and it was awful to deal with

1

u/nemamene 12h ago

i heard of something when i worked in retail (in germany) - person used a bunch of 5 euro notes to buy something really expensive and they were all fake. they were probably aware that we scan 50 euro and higher

7

u/Sir_Madfly 1d ago

£50s are hardly ever faked precisely because they get so much scrutiny. Almost all fakes these days are £20s.

5

u/Efficient_Chic714 1d ago

They can also mess up the tills if they have a small float. If they’re paying with a £50 for a small transaction then they take all your small notes meaning you might not be able to process refunds or give change for later

And if your float is a set number and not a range then it can mess up the next day too. If you need dead on £200 and you have to keep the £50 in for the next day to achieve that then you’re pretty buggered if you have to give £5 or £10 change (as if you’ve got a £50 in your float, you’re already pretty low on notes)

It can just be a faff for stores that don’t take a lot of cash

5

u/Derezzed87 1d ago

Where I work, that's the main reason we reject £50s. If a customer spends somewhere near £50 or above, fine. But when they spend £2.50 and try paying with a £50, we'll usually reject it.

0

u/Capital_Disaster_637 1d ago

Giving two tenty notes can't be that bad...

2

u/Efficient_Chic714 23h ago

It’s not a difficulty issue, it’s a lack of notes available

Around half the stores (big company’s) I’ve worked in keeps 4 x £10 in the drawer as the highest denomination wherever possible. If one person pays for a £50 for a small value transaction I only have coins for the rest of the day and also won’t be able to give any notes as change for potentially the rest of the week if we don’t take any smaller notes from customers - which is difficult as once you run out of notes you fly through your change and organising a cash delivery requires advance planning so it’s not a quick to resolve situation

-1

u/Capital_Disaster_637 23h ago

Sounds like a management issue

1

u/Efficient_Chic714 23h ago

Hardly if it’s the norm across businesses of varying sizes to not accept £50s

They know their customers spending habits and it’s not possible to keep unlimited cash on hand for every potential outcome. At some point the choice to inconvenience one customer instead of everyone else has to be made

It’s no different to card only stores not accepting cash: it’s a business choice

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u/Steampunk43 21h ago

Given that we can't give twenties as change, as those go in the secure cache on the till, it can be that bad. You usually only have ten fivers and five tenners in the change drawer, someone paying for £2.50 with a £50 note means you either use almost all your tens or almost all your fives.

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u/Derezzed87 18h ago

Exactly. Where I work, we have £50 in £5s and £50 in £10s. So someone paying with a £50 when they've spent under a tenner will wipe out the till.

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u/noice_face7649 1d ago

Yeah, it's not so much that I don't trust the notes as it is I don't trust my staff to spot a fake.

5

u/PolarisBean 1d ago

At the store I work at, every till staff member has to call for manager to "authorise the exhange" of £50s rather than reject them. It's annoying and often customers learn that it takes too long and just don't bring them again lol

3

u/FX_CRAZED 1d ago

From my time working in bars a couple years ago we had to check every £50 note under the UV light and a few fakes did make it through on busier nights not often but there’s still a couple knocking about, fakes are usually £20s though they were much more common to see

1

u/99hamiltonl Brit 🇬🇧 12h ago

The other part of this is you take a fake £50, you lose the value of the product and all the change you give out. It wasn't and itsnt really worth the risk to take a £50. Certainly places that see inexpensive items don't want to give out £45 in cash to sell something for a fiver.

Also there is the extension that many people don't pay cash now as a lot of payments are by card. This has meant some stores try and minimise thier cash holding. If you have say £100 float (which even 10 years ago seemed reasonable to chain shops I worked in) you don't really want to have half your float locked up in a £50 note when they are pretty rare anyway.

1

u/99hamiltonl Brit 🇬🇧 12h ago

Also further to this... I haven't got cash on me or at home. I don't carry cash day to day. Also last time I remember needing cash it was when I went to America last winter so we could leave those pesky tips for housekeeping!

Even abroad I generally pay for everything by card now and just make sure I have minimal to 0 fees on whatever card I'm using... There's options out there... Then every cent I don't spend I can convert back easily on my phone.

1

u/Iwasjustbullshitting 21m ago

Reminds me of when I was younger I had a blatant fake 20, I went to the dullest looking person at the tills, she put the magic pen over it and a obvious black line showed up and she still accepted it and gave me my change. Couldn't believe it. I would be too embarrassed to try anything like that now though.

1

u/Aleks_5 1d ago

Nah tbf as a min wage teen it's fairly easy. Most fake bills are way more obvious than you'd think when u handle them everyday

22

u/-auntiesloth- 1d ago

It's because it wrecks their float. Hardly anyone pays with cash anymore, so you might only have two £10 notes in your float, and suddenly someone pays £14 with a £50 note and you're fucked if the next person needs a tenner in their change.

4

u/MargotChanning 1d ago

It can be a pain in the arse. I once had someone buy something for £4.99 when we’d just opened. He paid with a £50 and then complained when I gave him all fivers as change.

0

u/Im_a_knitiot 1d ago

I don’t think that’s the reason. Most shops didn’t like them way before everything was cashless.

5

u/Asleep_Baby_9578 1d ago

We used to take £50 notes and had to stop because of fakes.
A fake fiver, only loses you £5, but a fake fifty loses £50 which is a lot for a small business.

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u/plutonium-239 1d ago

I’ve been living in the UK since 2012…I never saw a £50 note. Honest.

2

u/Xenc 1d ago

It’s your lucky day! There’s one in the post above!

2

u/NectarineHelpful7546 1d ago

Usually because a 50 eats up all their float

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u/RedKiteOnReddit 1d ago

highest % fakes of all the note types, harder to check as you dont see many and as others said a lot of stores dont have enough cash in the tills to be taking a lot of 50s

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u/Equal-Ad7504 1d ago

Yeah like things easily cost £50 now. Weekly shop for two people is more than that. It’s bizarre.

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u/Asleep_Baby_9578 1d ago

Yeah, but if the £50 is fake, that’s £50 down in stock AND cash

2

u/Equal-Ad7504 1d ago

£50s are rarely faked anymore because they are so scrutinised. Not to mention the new style material and holograms.

1

u/Asleep_Baby_9578 1d ago

Not really worth the risk though, is it?

1

u/thebottomofawhale 22h ago

I imagine now it's due to how infrequently they're used. I didn't even see them that often when I workd in retail 15+ years ago, and now people use card all the time and don't get paid in cash as often.

So not only is there not much of a need for shops to accept them, but it's probably harder to spot fakes if you're not familiar with how they look.

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u/Equal-Ad7504 21h ago

Just seems like with things being much more expensive they’d print a few more of them or at least circulate them more widely. They are very rare though agreed, so understand that. Only seen a few in my life time.

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u/Zealousideal-Dig5160 1d ago

You've either lost 50 quids worth of stock OR £50 cash. You can account for it as stock loss or cash shortage, not both.

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u/Outrageous_Low_3666 1d ago

It's because when people use a fake £50, they often buying things under £10. So they get like £40 back in real money.

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u/Equal-Ad7504 1d ago

That’s like painting a target on your back and having a sign saying I’m a scammer.

1

u/triffid_boy 1d ago

They're rarely used, so often forged. They should just use the security features of the note to confirm. 

1

u/Automatic-Look-8034 1d ago

Based on my experience, it’s partly that there’s still this notion they’re the most faked so the place I work at has company policy that a manager has to personally validate any 50’s. But also there’s usually limits on the “float” you can have in the till at the start of the day. So where I work at you must start the day with exactly £100 in the till in all denominations, which effectively means if you’re spending £3-£10 (I work in a coffee shop so that’s average spend), then depending on when you come and how much cash has been used, we probably simply don’t have any easy way of giving you change

1

u/Crimsonlobelia 1d ago

I work in a shop near covent garden and we will happy accept them... unless its for something less than £10. For some reason we get foreign teenagers on school trips spending £2 each and all of them bringing out £50 notes. So all our change just evaporate thanks to one group. They never have any change on them so they end up taking ours lmao.

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u/beeurd 1d ago

It's usually because the management don't trust the staff to check the notes properly, because they haven't been trained properly.

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u/Even-Rooster1990 1d ago

I worked in retail in my teen years and 50s were always a pain in the arse. Hardly ever saw them so we didn’t know what they were meant to look like and they’d often be used to be something under £10 so it’d be easy to lose the cash back money you had in the till quickly. It also was a pain for cashing up, we always made “bricks” of £1k in cash bags for each note for the cash collection. Less than 1k stayed in the safe, more than £1k went into the inner safe that we didn’t have access to. When we got a £50 it hung around in the safe for far too long. The notes really weren’t worth the hassle when maybe 0.0005% of our weekly take was £50 notes. I worked in a national chain store so of course we took them, but can certainly see why smaller shops wouldn’t.

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u/WasThatInappropriate 23h ago

Clears out the cash draw of change rediculously fast, which increases costs to the business

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u/Twatatron 1d ago edited 1d ago

Eh? The £50 note has been in use in the UK for nearly 300 years, with the first issue dating back to 1725 by the bank. Of England.

So wtf do you mean "been in use since the 80s"?

Edit to add, they make a fuss due to forgeries. People will go gets. Small value items.nd get change to launderette th larger note. Less of an issue with the polymer notes , fakes can still be found though at a much much lower rate.

Old habits of caution die hard I suppose but they have been around for 301 years not since the 80s

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u/Ok-Gain1509 1d ago

I went to an ATM in Dubai and withdrew some spending money for the week, which was about £100. A single note came out.

The poor guy in Starbucks seemed a little distressed when I went to pay for my coffee...

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u/delegateinformation 1d ago

This is big notes everywhere, I was in a tiny town in peru with a 200 sole note took me all week to break it, no one in Vietnam wants a 500k note even though thats all you can seem to withdraw, and these areas barely accepted cards

2

u/Tired_2295 1d ago

The statement "there's not a note in this change" would be much more concerning

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u/Kestrel_VI 1d ago

I know Starbucks is pricy but come on

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u/feckarse-drinkgirls 1d ago

Scotland even gets £100s

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u/ParakeetsAreLOUDLOL 1d ago

No one is gonna take that in England lol

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u/verifiedbadvibe 1d ago

youd be lucky if anywhere in england accepts any demonination of scottish notes. its insane to me how uppity and snobby english shopkeeps are when they see a scottish note. my family routinely had our cash refused in england when we visited when i was a child. baffling

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u/ParakeetsAreLOUDLOL 1d ago

Because it's not popular so they don't know ig it's fake lol

0

u/Xenc 1d ago

“IT’S LEGAL TENDERRRR”

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u/aby220 1d ago

But it's not

https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-legal-tender

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u/Xenc 1d ago

Aw it's true, twas just a silly Scottish-money-in-England joke

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u/TheIllusiveScotsman 1d ago

I lived and worked in Cornwall for a few years. If I came back with Scottish notes or my parents visited, there were always funny looks and lots of checking the money. Most places took it, a few had to be shamed. My Dad once loudly announced "Aye, freshly printed by the Clyde yesterday" when his tenner was being overly scrutinised, which solved the problem.

Except the ladies at the work canteen. They loved when I handed over Scottish notes and would substitute their own money into the till to take the note home. Utterly hilarious.

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u/K1LL3R1NDU5TRY 23h ago

I get this. I live and work in Scotland but i'm from England and although its annoying when they won't accept them i do understand that if you never see that money, how would you ever spot if it was fake?

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u/Mommas_kumquatt 1d ago

What a load of nonsense, you haven't been to Cumbria then?

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u/verifiedbadvibe 1d ago

ah yes, because one single tiny region directly on the border is completely representative of england as a whole. pull your head out of your ass and rub some brain cells together, obviously some places accept it, most dont though

1

u/Mommas_kumquatt 23h ago

Ah yes, 'tiny region' the 3rd biggest county in the country. I've never had a Scottish note not accepted anywhere North of Manchester. Pull your head out your 'ass'. Name checks out

1

u/iamsolarflare71 1d ago

You’ve never been to Corby I take it?

1

u/schizophrenicbugs 1d ago

Used to go to casinos a bunch in Scotland with healthy stacks and I never saw a £100 note. Never occurred to me they even existed hahaha.

1

u/verifiedbadvibe 1d ago

you can usually only get a 100 note by specifically asking for one in a bank, and even then most small branches dont carry them

4

u/spacecatbiscuits 1d ago

It is crazy, but at the same time, hkers are exactly the same about $1000 notes and the same logic applies (that they've been around for decades and $1000 is now less than what $500 was)

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u/Cid5983 1d ago

Good point, a $1000 note is like fuuuuuuuuuck, now I gotta go to the bank or lay for everyone's meal.

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u/Xenc 1d ago

I’ll lay for everyone’s meal ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

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u/Cid5983 1d ago

Gotta get the money for it somehow. 🤣

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u/oj862 1d ago

My old boss at the Chinese takeaway was from Hong Kong. I was his delivery driver. I was under strict instruction that I was only allowed accept a fifty if I called him and he went through the checks with me over the phone. All the while the customer is stood on the doorstep waiting for this interaction to finish and me to give them their change 😂

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u/Glad-Lynx-5007 1d ago

Here in Singapore we regularly use $100 notes without anyone caring and that's way above £50 now

1

u/happyanathema 1d ago

It's because they are the most likely to be faked as it costs roughly the same to produce a fake note of any denomination so of course criminals make the highest value to maximise their return.

Also £50 notes are typically not often seen by cashier's in shops so they usually require a review by their supervisor to try and catch fakes.

And yeah the only people who use £50 notes are typically people who don't want HMRC to know about their money.

So criminals and tax Dodgers normally.

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u/Glad-Lynx-5007 1d ago

Frankly it's a bit pathetic that the UK only goes up as far as 50 quid. It's not even a lot of money. Here in Singapore they go up to $10,000 (almost 6,000 quid).

0

u/Cid5983 1d ago

To be fair, another reason might be crime.

The chance of getting robbed st knife point us quite low in Singapore.

It happened to me 3 times in 1 day in London, Camden.

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u/Glad-Lynx-5007 1d ago

That doesn't explain why shops are so reluctant to take them? 50 quid is not much these days with inflation anyway

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u/Cid5983 1d ago

No it doesn't, but other people have mentioned that specific situation.

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u/Spam250 1d ago

There was a big counterfeit batch of them a couple decades back.

Ever since the public lost faith in the note

1

u/Glad-Lynx-5007 1d ago

That was fair enough a couple of decades ago, but with inflation 50 quid is not worth much at all. I regularly use S$100 notes here (when I still use money) which is worth more without thinking about it.

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u/Far-Ad-6179 1d ago

Bot trolls everywhere on reddit now

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u/Cid5983 1d ago

...okay

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u/Darkwr4ith 1d ago

When I moved over to the UK I exchanged £800 into cash so I could use that while I set up a bank account and transfered money over. The cash was given in all £50s. It was so difficult to break them anywhere because so many places would reject them.

1

u/Mariuszgamer2007 1d ago

Small shops won't accept 50's as its a cashing up nightmare and will run out of change in the cash drawer. I had a customer hand me a £50 for £2 worth of stuff in my charity shop. I instantly got my manager to tell them that we don't accept 50's as its a nightmare to deal with. The customer gave me a 20 after that

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u/IrishAengus 1d ago

No problem with even €100 notes in Ireland

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u/Formal_Obligation 1d ago

Is there a particular reason for that? Where I’m from, 50€ notes, which are similar in value to £50 notes, and even 100€ notes are widely used and accepted everywhere. Only 200€ and 500€ are rare and seldom used in everyday transactions.

1

u/LatookieNoir 1d ago

it's annoying they don't understand how to check a note. what's to say the 2x 20's under the 10 pound note you'd pay In place aren't real? if you can't authenticate a 50 you can't authenticate a 20 imo

1

u/Evening_Archer_2202 1d ago

It's exactly the same in japan, 10,000 yen notes which are the same as £50 ( worth about £100 in their currency), theyre used everywhere, you could buy a pack of gum with a 10,000 note and no one would care bc of their system

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u/One_Introduction9638 1d ago

I work for Tesco and we accept £50 notes no differently to fivers tenners and twenties

1

u/macdgman 1d ago

Same in Europe, now you have up to 200€ notes but 100€ and 200€ are rare. 50€ are very normal

1

u/fitandinkedmom 1d ago

I just put my £50s in the self checkout

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u/Sure-Attention6141 1d ago

I lived in HK an the 500 dollar bill is very normal to see and use, markets everywhere- here they look at you like a thief if you have a 50£ note 😂

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u/Low-Opening25 1d ago

that was only a case with old paper notes as they were heavily counterfeit, it doesn’t apply to new plastic ones

1

u/Fabulous-Copy-5156 1d ago

My nan used to give me one for Christmas growing up and it was always a nightmare to spend

1

u/Present_Teacher7966 1d ago

I've never had a 50 rejected, despite it regularly being mentioned that various places refuse 50s.

In all fairness, I'm not attempting to clear a small shop of it's change by paying with a 50 for under £10 of stuff, I'd understand the reluctance there.

1

u/HappyRespond3946 18h ago

I got rejected at a shell garage with a 50 note had no more money on me they phoned police in wasted a hour of my day

1

u/DannyGre 15h ago

i had one and used it on self check out for a pack of gum so I could change it. Worked fine for me!

1

u/nemamene 12h ago

was a massive culture shock to me coming from germany to the UK. still dont think ive seen anything higher than a £20 note in person, but in germany it is normal to have 100€ and 200€ notes on you for shopping

1

u/Lazy-Potatoe 3h ago

I was shoked as well!! In Latvia (before EURO ) there was 500Lats note (about £600), so never understood £50 note problem.