Mathematician of note

[Gob]

The new £50 note goes into circulation on Wednesday – but with consumers increasingly going cashless, for millions of people it may be months or even years before they see or touch one.



It’s been around for 40 years, but the £50 note doesn’t have a great image: there is a perception that aside from some overseas tourists, the only people who use them are criminals, tradespeople looking to evade tax and gamblers.

ATMs rarely give them out, and some shops don’t like taking them, either because they are worried about counterfeit notes or it would mean handing over all the change in their till.

When they do make an appearance in the news, it’s usually not for the best reasons: the police warning local residents to watch out for fake ones; footballer Phil Bardsley prompting anger after being photographed lying on a casino floor covered in £50 notes (that was in 2013); or Sports Direct founder Mike Ashley being left red-faced after he pulled a wad of fifties out of his pocket when he went through a security screening at his company’s warehouse (in 2016).

However, perhaps the new-look £50 – featuring Alan Turing, the scientist best known for his codebreaking work during the second world war – will give the note’s image a makeover.

Its arrival is notable as it means the Bank of England has now completed its switch away from paper money.

The Turing £50 will join the Churchill £5, the Austen £10 and the Turner £20, all of which are printed on polymer, a thin and flexible plastic material that is said to last longer and stay in better condition than paper.

As part of this week’s publicity drive, it was announced that Snapchat had teamed up with the Bank of England to turn the new note into an interactive celebration of Turing, creating an augmented reality lens that brings the banknote to life when seen through a smartphone camera.

However, even before the pandemic, many people only rarely encountered a £50 note, and the coronavirus crisis has triggered a slump in the use of cash which could end up being permanent.

The banking trade body UK Finance said last week that the number of payments made using notes and coins fell by 35% in 2020 as contactless payment exploded in popularity and some people deliberately avoided contact with cash because of Covid fears.

In 2013, a Bank of England survey found that 27% of respondents had used a £50 the previous year, while 29% had never used one.

Yet some may be surprised at just how many £50 notes are out there. Reintroduced in 1981, there are currently 357m in circulation – up from 221m in 2014 – which is only a little less than the total number of £5 notes (407m). That suggests there is a demand. Those 357m £50 notes have a combined value of just over £17.8bn.

The launch of the new banknote represents a big bounce-back, as only a few years ago it looked as if £50 notes might be axed.

In 2016, Peter Sands, a former chief executive of the bank Standard Chartered, published a paper in which he proposed “eliminating” high-denomination currency such as the £50 note because they “are the preferred payment mechanism of those pursuing illicit activities”, and also played an important role in tax-dodging.

“Ask people in the UK when they last used a £50 note … and the most common answer is to pay a builder or plumber. The incentive is tax evasion, since payment in cash makes it easier for the individual to avoid VAT of 20%,” he wrote at the time.

It appears ministers read his paper: in early 2018, the government indicated it was considering ditching the notes. In a call for evidence, the Treasury said the £50 note “is believed to be rarely used for routine purchases, and is instead held as a store of value,” adding: “There is also a perception among some that £50 notes are used for money laundering, hidden economy activity and tax evasion.”

But just a few months later, ministers committed to keeping them.

Nikki Strickland, the head of product marketing at De La Rue, which prints notes for the Bank of England, said people would find the new £50 easier to authenticate because many of the design elements such as the security features were consistent across all the polymer notes. It will be “a less alien note when they get hold of it”, she said.

Many people have never received a £50 note from an ATM. The Link cash machine network said that in the past, “there have been comparatively few ATMs which dispense £50 notes, and many of those were in locations like casinos and nightclubs”.

However, the Link chief executive, John Howells, added: “With the new smaller design and extra security features, in time we may see more people using them for payments and therefore more ATMs dispensing them.”

The design of the new note, which incorporates several features relating to Turing, was unveiled in March.

[Scooter]

In 2016, Peter Sands, a former chief executive of the bank Standard Chartered, published a paper in which he proposed “eliminating” high-denomination currency such as the £50 note because they “are the preferred payment mechanism of those pursuing illicit activities”, and also played an important role in tax-dodging.

in early 2018, the government indicated it was considering ditching the notes...“There is also a perception among some that £50 notes are used for money laundering, hidden economy activity and tax evasion.”

They make it sound like drug dealing, tax evasion and other illegal activities would not exist but for the £50 note. Surely shady characters doing their business in cash would take the equivalent value in smaller notes just as willingly.

[Gob]

Have to agree. Or switch over to crypto currency?

[Bicycle Bill]

The banking trade body UK Finance said last week that the number of payments made using notes and coins fell by 35% in 2020 as contactless payment exploded in popularity and some people deliberately avoided contact with cash because of Covid fears.

Anyone who does not want their physical currency for fear of catching COVID from it — well, after some deep soul-searching I have come to the following conclusion.

I am already elderly, and according to actuarial tables will probably be dead within another ten years or so.  So, I will offer myself as a sacrificial lamb.  Pass your dirty infected money, regardless of denomination or unit of exchange — dollars, pounds, Euros, pesos, whatever — on to me, and I will take the burden onto myself and relieve you of the risk of the Virus of Death.

-"BB"-

[rubato]

I don't know about the others but US currency is impregnated with antibiotics to extend its life.

yrs,
rubato

[ex-khobar Andy]

I'd not heard that rube. The production process for paper is pretty sterilizing (Kraft, various chlorinators used in bleaching) and slimicides are regularly added to prevent buildup of crud on the rollers, but it is not considered a sterile product by the end of the process.

And antibiotics of course don't help much against a viral agent such as COV-SARS-2.

[Big RR]

I had not heard of antibiotics in the bills either. I wonder if the constant exposure to lower levels of antibiotics in US money contributes to development of antibiotic resistant bacteria (and the circulating money helps spread them).

[Long Run]

Fomite transmission is pretty much a non-issue at least with COVID, so Bill's bill campaign is sound.

$50 bills are becoming more popular at ATMs here. Expect to see more of them.

[Big RR]

I agree many diseases will not be transmitted through touching surfaces, but some will; and that is my concern about the indiscriminate use of antibiotics. Indeed, I imagine antibacterial disinfectants would be just as effective on bugs that tend to decompose the bills and not have any effect on antibiotic resistance.

[Scooter]

$50 bills are becoming more popular at ATMs here. Expect to see more of them.

A few years back banks here began loading their ATMs with bills from $5s to $50s, so you can pick the combo you want. I suppose the added convenience is worth something, but it also slows transaction time down A LOT as people stand there trying to decide whether they want 4 $20s, 1 $10 and 2 $5s, or 2 $20s, 3 $10s and 6 $5s.

[Crackpot]

My bank only goes down to $10. (And up to $100) The slow down isn’t so much that you have the option to choose (you have to or else it will give you a bunch of hundreds with the last being arbitrarily broken down into smaller bills) but that the option functions in the most time consuming way as you have to manually add each bill one at a time to your total where it would be much easier to select a “major” currency and let it “auto calc” the rest. It would save having to hit the + button for $20 15 times when you only want 20$ or having to do the math for each permutation since by the time they ask what denominations you want the total withdrawal has already been given.

[dales]

Only $20 or $100 bills available at the ATM where I bank.

[Big RR]

Only $20 bills in mine, but I hate hundreds as I am always afraid of passing one as a 10 or 20 by mistake.

[Gob]

You should try being a bit more creative with your notes

[rubato]

I'd not heard that rube. The production process for paper is pretty sterilizing (Kraft, various chlorinators used in bleaching) and slimicides are regularly added to prevent buildup of crud on the rollers, but it is not considered a sterile product by the end of the process.

And antibiotics of course don't help much against a viral agent such as COV-SARS-2.

The antibiotics are there to preserve the paper from degradation by microbes, not effect sanitation. It is not intended to render the notes 'sterile'. I know of no viruses which degrade cellulose.

yrs,
rubato

[rubato]

I had not heard of antibiotics in the bills either. I wonder if the constant exposure to lower levels of antibiotics in US money contributes to development of antibiotic resistant bacteria (and the circulating money helps spread them).

Antibiotics in chicken, beef, pork &c are more important. Unless you suck on or eat currency on a regular basis.

Interestingly antibiotic resistance can be rapidly reversed. There was aa study in the Netherlands (?) where the use was outlawed and within a short time the resistance had disappeared. It makes sense. When you eliminate the selection process for resistance it has no evolutionary advantage.

yrs,
rubato

[Econoline]

Only $20 or $100 bills available at the ATM where I bank.

Same here

[Jarlaxle]

$10, 20, 50, and 100s here.

[BoSoxGal]

I don't know about the others but US currency is impregnated with antibiotics to extend its life.

yrs,
rubato

Do you have any citation on this that you could provide?

I’ve searched high and low, but can find no reference to the use of antibiotics in the making of US currency. Trying to conceptualize how antibiotics would even survive the printing process, or if applied afterward, persist at any functional level for any length of time once currency is in circulation.

There is, however, plentiful material available on the pathogen harboring qualities of US currency. Just one interesting case for avoiding paper funds: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dirty-money/

By comparison the polymer based material now used in Canada, the UK, Australia and elsewhere is much more pathogen resistant, apparently.

[ex-khobar Andy]

Antibiotics, specifically slimicides (they do what you think they do) are used in AFAIK all types of paper manufacture. Their purpose is to destroy bacteria which inhibit the papermaking process but I don't think (I could be wrong but that's very rare) they survive to perform any useful function in he finished paper. If antibiotics are added in some way to paper money I don't know about it, and I doubt that they would survive the sort of handling cash gets.