Money Matters
It is unhygienic but we all touch it. We can lose it and be mugged for it; yet we still want to hold it. Even though we can now shop without cash, we still like our notes and coins.
We will always need ready money for handouts to grandchildren, small purchases and leaving tips. Cash makes it easier to monitor our spending, and it’s the only way youngsters will learn the real value of money.
This year, some of our notes and coins are changing dramatically in appearance, and the old forms will cease to be legal tender. Check now for any spare money lying around the house.
Legal tender has a precise meaning: it is money that must be accepted in payment of a debt. Royal Mint coins and Bank of England notes are legal tender in England and Wales but no banknotes are legal tender in Scotland and Northern Ireland, though of course they are readily accepted there.
With smaller denomination coins, from 50p down, there are limits on how much constitutes legal tender. Shops can refuse to take more than £10 worth of 50p pieces or 20p in 1p coins.
At the moment, the old £1 coin is still legal tender, along with the new twelve-sided pounds that are steadily turning up in our small change, but you can spend them only until October. By that time, about 1.6 billion of the old round pound coins will have been taken out of
circulation. High-street banks should still agree to take in your old coins, although they can refuse.
The innovative plastic £5 note is well established and a new polymer £10 note arrives in September. The old-style £5 ceases to be legal tender on 5th May but banknotes retain their value for all time. Banks are more likely to accept demonetised notes than coins and, with luck, will understand that turning away your out-of-date fivers is bad publicity, particularly if you are a customer of that bank.
If they do, the Bank of England in London is the one place that will always accept old notes, though not coins. You can take them in person or send them by post.
While we can now access all other banking services from the sofa with a telephone, computer or mobile phone, we still need to leave the house to get cash – and June is the fiftieth anniversary of the first ATM. This automated teller machine was installed by Barclays in its branch in Enfield, north London, in 1967.
In the early days, customers had to buy hole-punched vouchers from the bank to use later in the cash machine. You could withdraw a maximum of £10.
Originally, cashpoints dispensed only brand-new banknotes; now they can deal with quite scruffy ones. Soon, ATMS will be even more sophisticated because banks want to turn them into 24-hour self-service branches. You will be able to withdraw cash using mobile phones instead of debit cards and will be identified by an iris scan. You will be able to deposit cash, apply for loans, pay bills and withdraw foreign currency. We will never become a cashless society.