Lots of shops (at least in my neighbourhood in London) flat out refuse to accept £50 notes.

Interesting! My neighbourhood in London (NW6 - not particularly upmarket) seemed to accept them fine... as well as most places in Central London.

Interesting indeed! My area has lots of tourists doing short stays, so I would've assumed that shops would be MORE open to accept all sorts of cash, but nope. Most places have notices that say they don't accept the £50 notes due to fear of counterfeits.

Shops can refuse to accept them but if you are using them to settle a debt; pay restaurant bill / taxi ride then they cannot legally be refused.

Yes they can. It means they can't sure you for not paying though.

[1] https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/knowledgebank/what-is-legal-...

Cue debate about if stamps must be accepted!

If you're in Cheltenham during Gold Cup week (a horse race event that attracts large numbers of people) there are many fake notes floating around, so local stores stop accepting notes in the month around race week.

If it's anything like using the 50 euro bill in Spain, it's hard to use them in everyday transactions as usually places don't have enough change (or want to loose that change) for 50 euros if you order a coffee for example.

Assuming you have two €20 notes, which have no other purpose, making change from €50 is no different to making change from €10.

It's more likely a concern about a counterfeit note, although I've never had that problem with a €50.

Right, but if at the start of the day you've got no €20s but 4x€10 in your till, that could be change for 4 customers with €20s - or a single customer with a €50.

And a policy of "no €50s" is simpler and clearer than a policy of "€50s accepted only if we have at least 2 €20s in the till" which means customers won't know if they can pay until they reach the till.

The reasons a small business might not keep a large float of €20s in their till is probably obvious!

I use the 50 EUR note in Spain quite often (every week) without any problem whatsoever. Obviously if you are gonna pay a 1.30 EUR coffee with a 50 EUR note you might be asked if you have a lower one...

That problems happen if you try to use the 100EUR one and obove.

Guess it's very location dependent. In the middle of Barcelona/Madrid, people won't have any issues with your 50 euro bills but in villages scattered around (mainly my experience is Catalunya), it's hard to find a place willing to give you change on a 50 euro bill if you're only paying for something that is around 10 euros or less.

We haven't had any problems in Portugal. They would happily take our 50 and 100 euro bills.

Nobody uses them in day to day life. Many people have never even seen one. Most cash machines only have £20 notes as the highest denomination.

I agree they're rarely used by locals.

Having said that, when I have friends visit from Singapore, they often seem to carry £50 notes... and most places seem to accept them (although maybe this is less true outside London).

When I first moved to London my Australian bank changed about $1000 AUD for me to british 50s; I think in that part of the world the banks/money changers get shipments of 50s to save space/weight. Took me a good year to shift those though, 3/4 of places would outright refuse to accept them and the other quarter would handle them with a mix of confusion and distrust.

Denomination is too big for most daily use