Banks Won’t Gimme Fivers

ATM machines can be a pain, particularly when they won’t let you have any money.

Almost as frustrating is their habit of only discharging £20 notes. The fiver has become rather elusive. But the Bank of England is keen to keep the humble fiver alive.

Bank of England governor Mervyn King is concerned by UK banks’ penchant for only stocking larger bills. Says he: “The problem is not at the production end - we have an ample supply of new £5 notes waiting to be used. There is a need for an adequate supply of low denomination notes that can be used for small transactions.”

Over the past 15 years the value of £5 notes in circulation has stayed static at £1billion while the lifetime of the average fiver has doubled. Not surprisingly this has lead to a huge amount of crumpled notes which often clog up Banks’ sorting machines.

In response to King’s comments, Angela Knight, chief executive of the British Bankers Association, says that with £100 being the average amount taken out of ATMs at a single visit, it was “safer” to stock higher denominations, therefore cutting the number of trips needed to fill up the machines.

They could always just hand out free fivers if they really wanted to increase the circulation.

Anorak

Posted: 21st, June 2007 | In: Money Comments (3) | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink