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Comment by njarboe | Hacker News Reader

This problem has probably been exacerbated by the fact the the $500 euro note has not been issued since 27 April 2019[1]. I wonder if making storing euros in cash 2.5 times harder (500 versus 200 euro notes) was part of the reason the 500 euro was retired.

[Edit] The legal storing of cash. The stated reason was the criminal use of cash.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_euro_note

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According to that same article, the reason for retiring the note was because the people who benefited the most from its existence are criminals, who need to do their business in cash -- the fewer notes, the easier for them. That includes storage, I guess.

Still, I'm personally not in the eurozone, but in general terms for the end user high-denomination notes are not very useful unless you're gonna store them under your bed (and governments don't like this, they'd rather everybody be bancarized). Actually using them to buy things is a pain, since most businesses won't accept them. Having one in your wallet is a problem that you have to take care of, instead of just money

Interesting, I don't see any mention retiring the note because of criminal use or anything about the 500 note at all. Is Bloomberb A/B testing the content of articles now? Would not be surprised, but it would be a disturbing trend.

Commenter was referring to the Wikipedia article, their wording was a little confusing though.

The same people who benefit from encryption if govts are to be believed. If cash keeps being as unwieldy as it has become, a $100 note today is worth about what a $10 note was worth in 1920, people will just stop using govt back cash and use gold or art instead. Monero looks like it's the first large scale crypto to get inflation and anonymity at least partly right.

I've been in the eurozone since it started.. only ever saw 500 euro bills being exchanged in casinos.

I exchanged cash in Canada before heading to EU for 10 weeks and the kiosk gave me all EUR500 notes and said it was all they had.

Russian mafia has to liquidate somehow.

Ya, it’s a real mess, especially if you can’t break/spend them all.

At least I learned that France has several central banks.

You’re kinda SOL if you go to a euroized non-EU country (Montenegro or Kosovo).

And yet across the border, I've been given a CHF1000 note cashing a deposit slip in a post office.

> Actually using them to buy things is a pain, since most businesses won't accept them.

For me it always went smoothly when buying something that exceeded the value of the high note. Your experience may differ if you buy a roll in the bakery.

Spent them at an FNAC when buying a TV. They called up the bag-checking security guard at the front to check it.

Didn’t think they would know any better than the cashiers...

It also depends on the country. I had family hand me a 500 Euro note because they couldn't even get get it changed at banks in France.

I took it on my trip to Austria a week later and got it changed at the post office.

> According to that same article, the reason for retiring the note was because the people who benefited the most from its existence are criminals, who need to do their business in cash -- the fewer notes, the easier for them. That includes storage, I guess.

And then, they tell bitcoiners they are crazy for denouncing the overreach of central banks.

This is what they want the citizens to believe.

I wonder if we are meant to think of drug dealers but the governments are just as worried about the local handyman or small construction company getting untraceable cash payments without paying taxes.

This is why so many taxi drivers say their "credit card reader is broken"

They aren't getting enough €50 or $100 notes to be a real logistical problem. You can put 10k in your pocket, and count it in a minute or two.

If you have large piles of money to launder, one way is to build a rental property and pay all the materials/contractors in cash.

But now harder to do that with 5x the bills. Or suddenly stuck with 500s that nobody wants to take.

Wait... how do you explain the appearance of the building with no expenses shown except "from cash"?

There are expenses, they're just not the right expenses.

At least in Canada, the city cares about building permits, but doesn’t do any checking on how the building/construction was paid for.

Banks don’t really question rent cheque’s coming in every month, or a large bank transfer coming from your lawyer for the sale of property.

In 2016 India did the infamous demonetization claiming that the ₹500 notes were used in hoarding black money and funding terrorism.

It ended up massively shocking the unorganised economy, and the nation is still recovering from it. The main reasons the government stated while doing it are still going on. The entire exercise didn't solve any problems.

I don't have any actual knowledge of the effects of this in India.

However, I think that when a member of the general public makes sweeping statements like "the entire exercise didn't solve any problems" it's only flaunting prejudices. If you work at a job related to infrastructure, the details would be incredibly boring to the public, and certainly aren't shared. But you could see something was double or half the year before, and it would mean infinitely more than a million people parroting what everyone always says because they always think the same thing.

This problem has probably been exacerbated by the fact the the $500 euro note has not been issued since 27 April 2019

The United States used to print $100,000 notes. They were only available to banks for moving from bank to bank, I believe, and so were useful for reducing the number of notes that needed to be stored by banks, while keeping them out of the hands of criminals.

> They were only available to banks [...] while keeping them out of the hands of criminals.

So they were discontinued when they couldn't find any non-criminal bankers?

So, when they formed the Fed?

The US also had lower denomination bills like the $500 and $1000 until 1969. They were not in much use then but I think that they could have useful legal uses today considering all of the inflation that happened since 1969. The $500 now would be about like $75 in the 1960's.

I'm trying to think of places that would want to accept $500 to $1000 notes when many places won't even accept a $50 or $100 and consider them "large bills."

While I agree with your premise that inflation makes $500-1,000 notes practical from the standpoint of modern expenses, businesses I interact with tend to prefer a third party to verify payment (CC merchant, cashiers check, etc.).

Cash is dying and although I love convenience, I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing.

Cash will continue to be #1 for Craigslist/yard sale-type transactions for a long time I'd say.

Would you accept a $1000 or even $500 note from a craigslist transaction?

I'm usually pretty hesitant to accept anything over a $20 or even deal in cash for small exchanges. I wouldn't even consider $500 unless I had a way to strongly guarentee the bill I'm looking at isn't fake.

It would take a bit of time and research before I felt confident enough at identifying these bills to accept them in a trade. I'd have to do a lot of those sort of peer transactions to warrant the overhead of that time.

> It would take a bit of time and research before I felt confident enough at identifying these bills to accept them in a trade.

If such bills were in common use, nearly everybody would know and be aware of the usual security features. So, this is only a problem because such large bills are so rare.

Except that such bills don't see a naturally high amount of use - it's still legal to use them for a bunch of purposes, they're just inconvenient for nearly all uses... Your statement applies better to not-currently circulating modest denominations, like two dollar bills.

Meet at a bank, works for me

Probably 5 minutes on YouTube and a special pen from Amazon

unless it's just a one-off purchase, I feel like a much better strategy would be to pay in $20's and have a fraction of them be fake. if someone paid me with a (hypothetical) $500 bill, I damn sure take at least a minute to hold it up to the light and look for security features. they paid me with 25 $20 notes, I would probably just count them and call it a day. if 10-20% of them were fake, I might not realize until I tried to deposit them.

I think it depends on the cost of counterfeiting a single note. All the security features must add up, and I won't be surprised if the cost, unless you're printing literally industrial quantities, makes fake $20 bills unprofitable to make.

Most of the times I've had to use $100 bills at real stores even they didn't check the security features or use a pen. Something like $500 would warrant more checking.

Eh last few times I’ve done this I used venmo, works great with strangers too

Why won't use something like Visa Money Transfer?

Because unless you want to read someones multi-page terms and conditions you can never know whether they can claw the money back.

I'm trying to think of places that would want to accept $500 to $1000 notes when many places won't even accept a $50 or $100 and consider them "large bills."

Landlords, for one. I'm in the process of leasing a new apartment and I am required to pay some of the fees with a debit card, and some with a cashier's check. It would be easier to just hand them a few large bills and be done with it.

Cash is dying and although I love convenience, I'm not entirely sure that's a good thing.

I try to use cash as much as I can. I also have active checking and savings accounts simply because I don't want to have a single point of failure.

Landlords typically don't accept cash for a variety of reasons. One is fraud but the other main issue is security for holding/transferring that cash and fact they have predictable schedules they'd have cash on hand.

I estimate the building I'm renting from right now would have anywhere between $650-750k or more revenue per month, most of which probably arrives in a one week or less window. That makes them a target for all sorts of potential thefts: employees, residents, burglars.

I've rented at many places and I've never once encountered a landlord that accepted or wanted to accept cash over secure electronic transfer methods, even for minor expenses like a consumer credit report check.

As a landlord, I would want a paper trail of all payments and interactions with a tenant due to the numerous landlord-tenant laws.

The US also had lower denomination bills like the $500 and $1000 until 1969. They were not in much use then

I seem to remember in that era they were useful for some people. My mother worked for a bank in Manhattan and on paydays she would take her check downstairs and cash it, come home with the money in her bra, and then deposit it in our local bank.

Why she didn't just deposit her check, I can't say. Maybe she didn't trust the bank she worked for. Or maybe cash cleared faster than a deposited check.

Maybe she was avoiding having all of her eggs in one basket. If your employer fails you lose your income. If your employer holds your life savings you might lose that, too.

These days we have reliable, trusted deposit insurance, but that didn't exist until the 1930s. People didn't really trust it until a few decades later.

I think they meant why she didn't cash her paycheck directly with her bank, as oppose to cashing out it and then depositing the cash with her bank anyway.

If she cashed it at the issuing bank the money is ready. Is she deposits it at her bank it will be ready in 3-5 business days. ACH transfers take time. Cash deposits do not. If she got paid on a Friday it might be 5 days before she would be able to withdraw.

I used to cash my paychecks at a check cashing store for the same reason. Even though they took a small fee the convenience of having money for the weekend was worth it.

Banks were a lot harder to deal with. They closed at 3 and were shuttered for the weekend.

Switzerland is probably the exception, but 200CHF bills are accepted without problems at most places (1 CHF is roughly 1 USD). There are also the less frequently used 1000CHF bills. I don't remember problems buying stuff with them s well, e.g. at supermarkets, once I bough stuff from IKEA with one such bill.

1chf is about 1 euro but things cost 5 times more in Switzerland than in the surrounding countries.

Canada had the $1000 bill as late as the 90’s.

I was working as a cashier and a Japanese tourist came in and asked if could split it up for him. It would have emptied my register, so I politely declined.

Only time I ever saw one in person.

We had 1000's well into the 90's in Canada. I got to hold one as a kid. Apparently 98% of them have fallen into mafia hands somehow which I find hilarious given our history. Especially since they can't get them back, want them back, and if used they have to be honoured. It must drive certain people crazy.

Not really. The big notes were only for interbank settlement, and usually represented gold or silver.

Once electronic settlement became common, these bills became obsolete.

500 euro was (and is) essentially not used for any day to day payments - i.e. the most important reason for having printed paper as money.

True. But it is nice to have large bills when buying something that costs a lot, like a used car. I recently did that in the US and if I had some $500 or $1000 bill things would have went a bit smoother at that nervous time in the transaction when you are handing over to a person a big chunk of money.

Why couldn't you use a cashier's check?

That's not a thing in (most countries of) Europe any more. I was shocked when I came to the US and saw that checks are still in use

Check and cashier's check are different things.

A cashier's check is like a domestic SWIFT.

Exactly why it is not needed, the banking system supports transfers between banks in SEPA for free or very cheaply.

Some people/business will still ask for a cashier's check though.

The point the person you are replying to is making is that to Europeans, checks are a thing that only exist in Hollywood movies.

It's difficult to imagine in a modern world, people or institutions writing or printing something on a piece of paper, and saying, "here, this is money".

Still a thing in France, at least as of last year.

Got stuck behind someone at the Carrefour (grocery store) paying with one. Ugh.

Still common in the UK. I know friends in Wales who can only pay by cheque because a two-signature policy applies to their bank account.

Very common in France for bigger transactions or guaranty deposits.

People in the US don't trust cashier's checks. For good reason. They are easily forged.

Some people would balk at the idea since they have bad credit and no bank account, and hence have to fork over a fee to walmart/publix/your local check cashing place in order to make it liquid. Cash works for everyone.

I agree, cashiers checks are safer, but some people have reasons to prefer cash.

Unless you're homeless you will have a bank account in Europe. For the simple reason that you can't really live without one. Taxes, salary, state allowance and mortgage are all done by bank transfer and nothing else.

In the UK all big banks offer "basic" (no credit attached) free bank accounts as the government were musing placing a public service obligation on them to make it compulsory.

In the UK, government benefits are paid by bank transfer.

We don't really use checks in Europe, at least not in the Netherlands..

But in the UK we do. You can set up a bank accounts which requires two signatures, then only cheque payments are possible. Very quiant, annoying and backwards.

I am the Treasurer of a Charity we set up to keep our local Library open. We need two signatures on our cheques - but not to be "annoying" or "backwards". It's simple security to stop a rogue actor emptying our bank account!

Yep I get that, but the artist playing at our charity festival have complaint every time about having to deal with cheques both I (treasurer) and the other finance officer have to sign. Why is it that in the 21st century we can't have a digital online two-signature policy yet have to sign a paper which signatures one easily can forge. That's backwards. We got cryptocurrencies but no way to implement a digital two-signature policy? Odd.

Because they are not used here since 19th century :)

In Spain the bank charges you for this service (you can negotiate the amount). There is no commision for cash, but you must fill a form to tell the taxman that you are getting a more than given amount (3000€ if I remember well)

I have never seen a check in my life :-) (EU), they are not used or supported (maybe in some special cases, but 99% of people never used a check here). Larger sums are always paid with bank-wire transfer which is free and usually fast (instant or 24 hour), smaller payments are done with debit (or credit) cards, and then small payments can be done with cash.

When I was a teenager, my mother was playing a lottery that sent out winnings as checks through the mail. She always gave those to me to cash in because I was the only one in the family who had a checking account at the local bank. Her bank did not have branch offices, so it was literally impossible for her to cash the check.

You tend to run into the problem that forging large notes has a much greater return on investment. People get nervous about accepting them. In the UK this definitely kicks in around the £50 mark.

Heh, yep, like to joke that $100 feels like a lot of money whenever you try to spend a $100 bill. I can barely fathom what it's like trying to pass a 500 EUR note.

If you spend time in casinos, $100 notes flow around like water.

Casinos are also a hotbed of money laundering.

Bugsy Siegel look at this with the note of approval

The most forged notes are the smaller ones because everyone checks the large notes. You can just hand people a photocopy of a €20 euro bill with a hologram sticker and if it’s in a dark bar you’ll probably get to keep the change.

Don't they run all the notes through the checker?

No, that takes way too much time. If you check using a UV light you’ll notice most simple forgeries but I guess most people just don’t expect small bills to be forged.

Does it? Every time somebody pays in cash in a store here they run each bill through a machine that, I'm pretty sure, checks the authenticity of the bill.

A store is not a bar. Stores typically have less transactions but these transactions involve more money, so you can afford more time.

There's no denomination larger than £50 in England, right? Scotland and NI have £100 which probably adds to the confusion.

In general circulation, that's right - but the Bank of England does have £100,000,000 notes: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21145103

Signs stating "$100 notes not accepted" used to be seen in many shops Canada about 15-20 years ago, when cash was much more commonly used. Since the switchover to polymer bank notes around 2011, counterfeiting has become almost non-existent but cash payments in general are much less common too.

I love how Japan is a cash economy. It's normal to walk around with 2-5 $100-equivalent bills (the 10,000 Yen note) as pocket change for a week or so.

Paid $22,000 in Y10,000 notes for a private event once. The staff didn't even bat an eye.

In many countries in Europe you can't use cash for large sums. We generally use bank transfers to buy cars.

I'm genuinely curious. Do you need to go to a physical bank location to do this? How do you buy a car in the evening or a Saturday afternoon, when a bank is closed?

In the UK online bank transfers work 24/7 and clear in seconds (all banks are required by law to have APIs for fast inter-bank transfers).

They're not legally required to be instant, but they usually are. The "ambition" set out legally was half a day, if your transaction is initiated in the morning it should clear that afternoon. It's just that in practice instantly is the realisation of this ambition when things work. And I don't think there's any API requirement, the regulation just explains the consumer experience, that you can transfer relatively small amounts of money (enough for a nice car, not enough for most houses) fast ("Faster Payments" is the name given to this feature), and doesn't dictate how.

For large transactions transfer for a fee already existed. CHAPS will move much larger sums of money (it's typically used to buy property so certainly millions but perhaps more) for a modest fee. You wouldn't want that fee on your weekly groceries, but when you just bought a house who cares?

Last I looked the backend for Faster Payments wasn't actually built. The big banks decided instead "temporarily" to just trust each other. If Bank A says Cathy sent Mike £5000 then Bank B where Mike's account is will credit Mike £5000 (probably instantly), presumably Bank A will reduce Cathy's account by £5000 and the two banks agree they'll settle things at the end of the day. This is only scary if Bank A might not actually have that £5000 to give Bank B at the end of the day when it's settled, which in principle should never happen under current financial regulations.

In the UK, and probably most places in Europe, with a debit card.

> and probably most places in Europe

Incorrect. I tried to buy a new car in France with a credit card. That was an extremely awkward moment. I was kindly told that this was a very weird thing to ask.

Debit cards and credit cards are quite different things in most of Europe.

To be fair, in Romania I was refused too, ~5years ago. All cards have a percentage fee - when you spend tens of thousands on something, even a small percentage adds up. Thus the car dealers require a bank transfer, which is generally free of charge for both parties.

It looks like the change in 2015/2016 to reduce card fees, while enabling us to buy a single bottle of milk by card with a 0.2% fee for the merchant, has made things worse for people selling cars.

Instead of a small, fixed fee (e.g. £0.10) it's now also 0.2%.

https://www.am-online.com/opinion/2016/12/06/opinion-debit-c...

(The article does at least tell us that "many" customers pay for the full price of the car with a debit card.)

0.2%? You could probably wring a greater discount from the dealer by haggling half-heartedly.

Typically the payment happens post-haggling... and by that point 1% of the price might be their entire margin on the sale. I mean, if you pay full list price, maybe they won't mind you paying with card :D

The same thing here in Brasil since 2002. The only difference that there is an artificial restriction that online transfer between banks outside of banking hours will only clear when the banks open again. Other than that most transfer between banks clear in seconds and can be made from your phone. This artificial restriction is probably going to be lifted this year. And of course, if seller and buyer have accounts in the same bank, there's no business hours requirement, it will clear in seconds not matter what the time of the day. Also, depending on the american bank, I usually am able to cash wire transfers coming from the US in the same day, if the american bank sent the wire during brazilian business hours. Everytime I deal with the American banking system I get appaled by its primitiveness. ACH is basically how banking technology worked on the early 90's in Brasil.

You can do it from your phone.

Buying a car in Europe is a complicated affair, and certainly not something that can be concluded in an afternoon.

What? You go to a car dealer, sign, pay and drive away.

Don’t you need to register the car in the DMV and get an insurance before you can drive away? That’s definitely the case in the parts of Europe I’m familiar with.

Getting insurance can be done online in about 5 minutes and the registration at the DMV equivalent is your problem (as the buyer) afterwards and can be done anytime in the next 2 weeks.

I can see that happening for second-hand cars but not for new cars that have to be issued new plates. But maybe things work differently in other countries. “Europe” is not really one place.

You can usually immediately get temporary transfer plates that’ll be valid for a month everywhere(?) in the EU.

I got that kind of temporary plates once... at the DMV. It was quick, but they didn’t materialize magically when I needed them. Maybe it’s easier now, though.

I’ve seen people use third party services that work with the DMV to make them materialize magically.

What a time to be alive!

Car dealers over here are also "DMV deputies" for lack of a better translation. You bring your license, they type some things in their computer, print an ownership document and you get your car. The more permanent (creditcard sized) ownership card thingy will arrive in the mail a few days later.

Insurance is indeed mandatory, but you can get it online in 5 minutes. Or by phone. They call it "drive away coverage" that works immediately but requires signing the final policy etc within something like a week.

In my state the DMV gives you ten days to register a new car. If you have any car insurance at all there is a grace period.

The “pay” part really depends on the value of the car and if you have a big pile of cash handy.

Recently instant SEPA transfers have made this easier, but not available between all banks.

Prior to SEPA becoming prevalent, I've witnessed it done with an id and credit check together with a decent sized deposit via debit/credit card (~€10K). Balance wired using SWIFT or TARGET2 within 72 hours of driving away. You have to swallow the card processing fees though.

Not necessarily, but safer to do so. I recently bought a used car from a private party, and we went to a lobby of a bank to close the final transaction. I got a cashier's check from the bank, signed it over to the seller, and exchanged the keys/title for the car.

This way, neither the buyer nor the seller needs to carry large amounts of cash with them. The cashier's check is not given unless the buyer's account has enough funds to cover it, so the seller doesn't need to worry about a bounced check.

Even if the bank branch is closed, they usually have private ATMs available that are much more capable than your average US-style ATM. You can do just about anything at those ATMs that you could do inside the branch.

At least, that's the way it was back in 2006, when my wife and I moved from Brussels, Belgium back to the US.

I remember many long hours sat at one of those ATMs (yes, they had private seating for most of them), paying various bills electronically using the bank account number given to us by the company that sent us the bill.

Direct account-to-account transfer is supported between all major EU banks. It takes a couple of seconds at most, and it's free.

If you mean SEPA instant credit transfers I think they are available only in some countries and they are not free in my experience.

In my country bank to bank transfers are free and instant.

It's extremely convenient to be able to pay anyone any amount at any time with nothing more than your phone.

Sounds like a good way to get mugged with violence.. "Transfer me all of your bank account, right now !!" (To an account opened using fake ids of course)

People with fake IDs are not going to engage in mugging. If you plan out your crimes so much that you have fake IDs ready, it's way safer and more profitable to do some scamming or fraud scheme instead.

It depends on the country. Within the EU, SEPA transfers must be no more expensive than the equivalent domestic payment. At least in Sweden, this means that SEPA transfers are free.

This rule is new though, it went into effect in December: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

> Charges levied by a payment service provider on a payment service user in respect of cross-border payments in euro shall be the same as the charges levied by that payment service provider for corresponding national payments of the same value in the national currency of the Member State in which the payment service provider of the payment service user is located.

SEPA instant transfers do typically cost around 1 euro in Spain and France, for example. Also for domestic transfers, so I’m not sure that regulation will have an effect.

FWIW, I did a SEPA instant payment last Thursday between German checking accounts. I was billed 0.24€ by my bank.

Are they irreversible?

I've always bought and sold vehicles (or anything private sale) in cash in Canada because I am extremely leery of reversible payment methods where the payment account owner can claim 'fraud' and I'm out the item and the money.

Craigslist and Kijiji (the most popular online classifieds platforms) explicitly warn people to deal only in cash because of this problem.

They are irreversible as soon as they show up in the receiving account.

> In many countries in Europe you can't use cash for large sums. We generally use bank transfers to buy cars.

Some, like Sweden and Italy, going to extremes to phase cash out of existence, the latter making 'large' cash transaction punishable by jail/fine.

I lived in EU during the financial crisis, and when cash got scarce prompting places in Greece to issue their own local currency [1] to do basic transactions (kids in school were passing out due to a lack of food, hospitals were running out of medicine and basic supplies in general) many were confident you would see something like this: Germany hoarding cash while the PIIGS were left to their own devices.

Its sad, the problems paper fiat currencies beget: be they the promises of utilitarianism or the illusions of prosperity its one I wish we can finally overcome soon.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/world/europe/in-greece-ba...

>I lived in EU during the financial crisis, and when cash got scarce prompting places in Greece to issue their own local currency [1] to do basic transactions (kids in school were passing out due to a lack of food, hospitals were running out of medicine and basic supplies in general)

Didn't something similar recently happen when Modi was trying to ban cash in India? Kinda backfired. Cash (and gold) will probably never die there.

>We generally use bank transfers to buy cars.

It's actually the only possible way to buy a new car.

If you don't believe me, go try and buy a car with a credit card in the EU, see what happens.

Is it possible to buy with cash?

It's probably not possible in most of EU because there is a limit for cash transaction which is I think 15 000 Euro (not sure if EU wide, but definitely here in Slovakia), over that you need to do a bank-wire transfer. All new cars are paid this way - or you purchase it with a loan / lease and don't need to put down this amount of money at once. Most new car dealers don't even have a cash register and would not take such an amount of money from you in cash. This is due to prevent money-laundering.

Not sure about other countries, but in Spain you can't pay anything above three thousand euros (IIRC) in cash.

People downvoting others in disbelief should try to find a source by themselves before.

2500 EUR if you live in Spain

https://www.agenciatributaria.es/AEAT.internet/Inicio/_Segme...

Depends on the country and the amount of cash [0]

[0] https://www.europe-consommateurs.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/eu...

You may technically be correct, as the UK is no longer in the EU. You can buy cars with a debit card in the UK, haven't tried using a credit card.

Debit card works fine to buy a car all over Europe and generally everyone here has a debit card. Creditcard usually doesn't work due to the much higher fees (2 to 3% for credit vs 0.2% for debit).

Funny thing, in Russia everything is backwards. You basically could pay for newspaper with credit card, but car or real estate cost of credit card / bank transfer will be so high, so it's common to pay in cash.

The best way to pay for a used cari the US (assuming you mean from an unknown private seller, not a dealer or family) is probably for the buyer and seller to go to the buyer's bank together and have the buyer get a cashier's check in front of the seller and exchange title/keys for cashier's check right then and there. It eliminates the risk of a forged cashier's check and the need to carry large amounts of cash.

Isn't the point of a cashier's check to avoid this entire process? The note should be associated to a bank and there should be multiple independent information providers that have contact information for that bank you can use to verify the information.

Obviously, using verification information such as a phone number from the note itself is susceptible to scamming, but discovering the contact information through multiple reputable external sources then contacting the bank from this information has extremely low risk of being scammed.

That still requires the buyer to hand over the check before they receive the keys and title.

I used one at Real, think I bought like 30 Euros worth of stuff. They did look at it for a bit, but accepted it without complaint. Amazing compared to a 50 pound note in England :D

the real reason why the 500 euro bill has been revoked was that for storing physical money (for banks, in those quantities) would become more expensive in order for the ECB to lower the interest/deposit rate.

next thing will be 200 euro bills revoked, then the base rate can go down to around -1%.

This really is the endgame in ZIRP. Removing the ability to store cash is the only way to effectively get rates into negative territory.

Which is why people should be very much against cashless rules.

In Germany, they are.

As far as I am aware, among all the Euro countries, Germans are particularly fond of cash.

Since I work in an area that is related to finance (think in the direction of planning/writing business applications for the banking sector), I seriously very often get asked (in Germany) whether one should cash out all the money from the bank account and store it in a strong private safe to avoid the negative interest of the banks that are in the wind.

There's a possibility that Deutchbank is bleeding money and the only way for the govt to bail it out without directly inject money is to go cashless, and let Deutchbank charge negative interest.

I mean, there's an easier way to set a negative interest rate on cash. Periodically select X% of the circulating serial numbers and declare that they're no longer valid currency.

In effect this makes X% of cash "burn off" every period, and allows the monetary authority to set any negative effective interest rate that they want.

This is by no means an endorsement of negative rates. But if you're going to go down that road, it's a better scheme than just trying to make holding cash too much of a pain in the ass.

This is too obvious. With the "only criminals use it" argument you have a much easier time convincing people how great the idea is.

Indeed it was. Even now the 200 Euro note is the best for laundering and transportation since it's the highest value bill in common circulation (per Fed employee)

Well, I am no expert but let me play the futurist here. After they killed the 200 Euro note it is going to be the 100 Euro note that is going to be used by those damn criminals!

It is in essence part of the same eradicating rights movement that is fighting against anonymity in the internet. "Hey look, there are some criminals benefiting from it so let's kill it."

agree

There are valid reasons to have anonymity on the internet - plenty of them. It's really hard for me to grok the intrinsic value and human right of carrying a 200 note instead of two hundreds. If I'm gift giving, maybe, but frankly I can't stand getting hundreds as gifts, they're a pain to spend and just cause more work for me.

I am against giving up any rights of individual freedom whatever so small the real value thereof is. I see it as a matter of gradually eroding the right of anonymous transaction/cash from the top and the bottom. They went after the 500 Euro bill and currently are on the way to kill the 1 and 2 cent coins. In 5 years they will go after the 200 Euro bill and so on.

In the UK, £20 notes are the highest commonly used. That doesn't mean they get rid of cash. There are just very, very few cases where you need that much cash that £20 notes are impracticable.

It seems the CHF 1000 note has the highest value among all.

Good luck using one though in Brazil or Vietnam - they're illiquid relative to euros or dollars and therefore harder to launder.

"widely used currencies" can be read as "usd, eur, jpy, cny, gbp, cad", although chf is up there it seems.

The really big criminals and tax evaders will ever find a way around this kind of restriction. This is useful to control the smaller fish. But, also, the cynic in me thinks that the big sharks have lots of friends in high places and politics and public administration and that those restrictions were never intended to catch them on the first place.

I doubt most of these laws are ever intended to catch the big fish -- like in business, the big guys always require special handling to process. For criminals, the big guys should already be so far disassociated with the actual activity that you're not going to catch them with normal crimes. For example, Al Capone was famously trialed on tax evasion, rather than any of the innumerable crimes he committed but couldn't be processed for.

The actual law simply isn't that notable in these cases, because the big guys have enough money to figure out how to navigate it liability-free.

Which is also why the law only really applies to the poor -- with enough time and resources, there's always a workaround.

Small net for small fish. Big net for big fish. There's also no problem with getting criminals to go through extra steps. The more processes, the more room for error.

The point is to not make it convenient for them at all.

If this was an actual problem, couldn't the ECB issue (eg) €1 million bearer bonds to the banks that have to store cash (these notes wouldn't need to go into general circulation). In fact, why don't they do that?

The short answer is that they don't want to make it easy for banks to hold cash; they want the banks to loan the money out (ideally) or deposit it with the European Central Bank where they will have to pay for the privilege in the form of negative interest rates (which is what the banks are trying to avoid by holding the cash).

I was storing 500 euro bills under my bed during the 08 crisis. When I moved to the UK, Barclays was the only non shady place that accepted them.

€500 used to be called Bin Laden. Obviously everyone eventually asks: why? Because everyone knows it exists,yet nobody has ever seen one. For the absolutely majority of Europeans it's a pretty useless note.

Meanwhile, Canada went in the opposite direction. Its polymer notes were 30% thinner than its paper predecessors.

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