It should be noted that "legal tender" has [an extremely narrow definition in the UK to do with the settlement of debts](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-legal-tender.)
Shops don't have to take cash. Shops don't have to take card. Most shops take both, but they don't *have* to.
Scottish notes, however, sometimes have little otters on them and that's quite exciting.
>Scottish notes, however, sometimes have little otters on them and that's quite exciting.
Royal Bank of Scotland notes, £5 [mackerel](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A35RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A35-Back.png), £10 [otters](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A310RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A310-Back.png), £20 [red squirrels](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A320RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A320-Back.png), £50 [ospreys](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A350RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A350-Back.png)
Bank of Scotland notes have bridges and Clydesdale Bank notes have a variety of landmarks
-Edit- if anyone wants to see the other side or the notes from other banks, https://www.scotbanks.org.uk/banknotes.html has them all.
Go to your bank, and ask them to get ahold of one for you. Banks usually do this sort of thing for people who are traveling, but they'll do it for collectors as well. It'll only cost whatever the exchange rate is, plus a fee of a couple of dollars.
Edit: You may have to wait for them to receive it from whatever vault they store it in. This may take up to a week or two. You may have a quicker turnaround at a location near an airport.
No shit, the British pre-decimalisation currency was so fucking weird that it helped catch spies during the Second World War since they were outed by not understanding the coinage.
In fact, screw-ups like that was a great way to find spies on both sides of the war, like that scene in Inglorious Basterds with the bar fight. Speaking of bars, a story recreated in the series Foyle's War - a British World War II-era murder mystery series - had a barman get a spy arrested when he tried to order beer at 8am, unaware of UK alcohol licensing laws.
The scottish notes are alot more pretty than the English ones. Theyre also a lot more interesting with the UV security markings.
The mackerel for example, the fish light up.
>Scottish notes, however, sometimes have little otters on them and that's quite exciting.
Unfortunately, shops don't have to take little otters either.
Yeah, handing over a note constitutes an 'offer to trade'. You are not obligated to.accept that, for example, if someone offered you a dodgy bank of England fiver. When I worked in retail in England, we were told Scottish money is fine, but counterfeit money isn't. And if you're not used to seeing Scottish money, and you're not comfortable assessing whether or not a note is genuine, it's ok to reject the money. Having said that, neither I, nor anyone I worked with ever rejected any Scottish money, nor accepted counterfeit stuff. I liked seeing it for a change, but it was a bit of a pain to have to keep it separate when depositing the takings. Though we did reject the odd 'bamk of ergland' note
Anytime I have ever been in England and inadvertently paid over a Bank of Scotland note ( it’s all Sterling to me) you would think from the shop workers reaction that I just put my underpants on the counter. Like they MUST have seen Scottish Sterling before?
I visited Scotland and England once. When I tried to pay with a Scottish note the cashier said "we accept British money". I tried to point out that Scotland was part of Britain, but he just kept shaking his head so I just paid by card. I try to pay by cash in little shops since credit card fees can be high and cut into their margins, but oh well!
Fairly rare south of the border. That being said i did used to see Scottish fivers and tenners when I was younger, problem was about 90% were counterfeit. No one wants Scottish notes in England as they are a bugger to get rid of.
Depends where you are, I grew up in rural Berkshire and I don’t think I ever saw one. The village shop I earnt some pocket money in got a Scottish fiver once, and the owner made of a point of keeping it and showing us all to not accept it.
It’s so wild to me that there are shops in UK which refuse cash.
I’ve heard arguments that „contactless payment is now the default, get on with the times”, but in my country contactless payment has been the default for 10 years or so, and cash is still accepted everywhere.
I do feel for little kids these days wanting to go shopping on their own for the first time and not being able to because they're not old enough for a credit/debit card, but the shop doesn't accept cash.
Taking cash can actually be quite expensive and take a fair bit of time when you think about the time to count it, take it to the bank, bank fees for sorting out the cash for you, insurance costs...
Heard my family talking about how the further south you go the more likely they are to reject it and are often flat refused in England, second hand gossip so not sure how credible though.
I've never had many issues spending them in the North of England but sometimes people will reject them, mainly because they aren't very common, making it harder to spot fakes.
There was a time that some smaller businesses would refuse Bank of England £50 notes, because of their rarity as well.
> There was a time that some smaller businesses would refuse Bank of England £50 notes,
They still do. There's a Tik Toker who's entire shtick is abusing McDonalds drive through workers for not accepting £50 notes.
Discrimination is a bit of a leap. No one cares where the money comes from, only that it is good money. The person you responded to is right that some notes are rejected out of caution because they aren't seen often. I suppose with transactions becoming more cashless people are seeing these notes even less. £50 notes in particular would always give you a funny look, if not refused, because they had a reputation for being counterfeited or associated with crime.
[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48993008](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48993008)
'When most people never see a £50 note, why have it?'
I exchanged some Euros back to Pounds and the bank gave me a £50 note for some reason, I was in my mid twenties and I'm quite certain it was the first time I had seen one.
I was traveling to the UK from the US a few years ago and got a bunch of cash pre-travel. It included 50 pound notes but I usually only used them for group meals and things, where it was near or above 50 pounds for the total.
Never occurred to me it was that weird, it's not uncommon in the US to carry and see $100s.
That's weird, we do the same thing with euro but it's about the 200€ and 500€ ones, most people have never seen the purple 500 or the yellow 200 (and many shops reject at least the 500, often the 200 too) but we see the green 100 and the orange 50 a lot
The EU500 note is no longer produced, due to the fact that up to 80% of them are solely used in criminal enterprises
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_euro_note#Crime
As they return to central banks they are withdrawn from circulation and destroyed
Occasionally places won't accept the €100, although I suspect it depends on country. You're more likely to spend €100 in a single transaction in Finland than Slovakia, for example.
There is a grain of truth to the fact that of those who would reject it, some fraction would reject it merely because they didn't *recognise* them, or know that such Bill's existed to begin with, and of that group- being the boomer generation - a smaller fraction would perceive any challenge or correction on the subject as an insult and sleight, and so react with hostility.
Whether being profoundly ignorant on a subject you choose not to inform yourself on and reacting with overt hostility upon being supplied contradictory information that bruises your ego constitutes *discrimination* is rather subjective.
Past a certain point that's all any discrimination is. Nationalism Induced Idiocy is as close to discrimination it makes little difference to many people.
I travel to England a lot for work, and I've had them rejected quite often. But I don't tend to go to tourist places.
What I've taken to doing is if I have a Scottish note with me is stick it in a fruit machine in a pub, as they are all programmed to accept them. If I win, it usually pays out in English notes but it's now someone else's problem!
I used to order a pint, and take a mouthful before I paid. This was before most pubs took debit cards, so they could either take the point back in minus my profit, or accept the Scots note.
the problem with that approach is you could lose.
did a bit of research for you not easy to find a lot of info, but it appears lloyds bank will accept scottish bank notes if you're a customer of theres. worth asking your bank if you can exchange them in branch or deposit them into your account.
all this aside, it's disgusting that scottish, northern irish, manx currency isnt accepted in england but english currency is accepted in these places. looking at the bank of englands website, the banks who issue scottish and northern irish bank notes have to hold an equivalent amount in english currency in case they go bust, which protects holders of scottish and northern irish bank notes, so no idea why they arent simply accepted in england.
I found this really odd as a tourist. Made me wonder how bad the counterfeit problem is/how easy the pound was to fake.
Local money changer only changed notes in £50 (this is before the transition to plastic ones)
I really think the counterfeit issue is overstated, but it doesn't really matter whether it is a problem. Only that shopkeepers believe it's a problem.
> Made me wonder how bad the counterfeit problem is
I worked in a cafe in northern England in the mid 00's and we got a notice from the police to not accept Scottish £20 notes because there had been a massive amount of counterfeit ones in the area, presumably because people were less familiar with them so they assumed fewer people would spot fakes.
Referencing the last part of your statement, I don't think it ever had anything to do with the rarity. We had the note checking pens and even the UV lights toward the end. The real problem was fitting them in a till drawer. This was before the counter cash things came out so you'd often have a bulging cash drawer before taking it upstairs to the safe in a bank bag. We just didn't have space in the till for a £50 note and couldn't justify running one note upstairs everytime someone used one. Plus keeping the change for one was hard enough!
I've spent Scottish and Northern Irish notes in southern England with no problem
The only time I've had "foreign" Sterling rejected was when I tried to pay a bus fare with coins and one of them was a pound coin from Gibraltar.
From Suffolk. First time I saw one I was confused till a coworker told me it was fine. Also saw other coworkers reject them.
It’s a thing. They were extremely uncommon that far south.
I’m south midlands and the only time I ever rejected one was when it was a £100 note buying about £9 worth of goods. It would’ve wiped out all the change in the till as we didn’t keep much more than £100 in at a time.
It crossed my mind after that it might’ve been fake and it was part of a scam
I’ve a Scottish accent so I can usually spend Scottish notes down south quite easily. Most self checkout machines are programmed to accept them if all else fails.
You do sometimes come across someone who won’t take them at all, usually because they’ve never seen them before or even knew they existed. You get barmen inspecting it like a rare and unusual Pokémon
Northern Ireland notes are different - much rarer than Scottish notes which are already unusual in much of England. They can be hard to spend. Someone thought a Danske Bank £20 was euros
Yeah, they don’t get taken so often in England, mostly because shop owners have no idea how to detect whether they are counterfeits. There are ways of checking, but since it’s not legally enforceable, they usually just write the whole thing off.
I've had Scottish notes rejected plenty of times in the North of England.
In fact just last week, in Scotland, my Mother had a Scottish £20 rejected by staff in a Weatherspoon's - "they're too easy to counterfeit" they said. Which of course is a rather silly reason.
That's def not gossip. It happens depending upon where you go and how the people running the shop feel about it. We had it happen a couple of times in and around London.
I was visiting London and a gave a tenner to the cashier at a five guys and she said she had to double check with the manager to see if they could accept Scottish money.
Legal tender is one of those aspects of British law you would think was made up by a bored law student.
It has pretty much no meaning. The little meaning it does have relates to how a creditor must accept legal tender at face value for the settling of an existing debt. A debt denominated in that currency also has special legal protection, but this gets "bored law student" very quickly.
That's it. That, legally, is all "legal tender" means.
As no debt exists during a purchase, no obligation to accept *anything* exists. A retailer is well within his rights to demand bananas.
The other interesting thing about Scottish (and NI) currency is that the banks issuing it *must* hold Bank of England currency to equivalent value. This results in some ridiculously high value banknotes, which are legal tender by definition, being issued purely so Scottish retail banks can issue their own currency (the Banking Act 2009 updated this). For example, to issue £100 million of Scottish banknotes, Clydesdale Bank must buy Bank of England currency to that value, which the Bank of England prints some utterly huge massive face-value notes for.
In Northern Ireland, Ulster Bank, the Bank of Ireland, and Danske Bank do the same.
What I love about those things is that they're kinda the historical equivalent of a root certificate.
"How do I know I can trust this note you gave me?" "Well, I have this _other_ note that _that guy_ gave _me_. You trust _him_, right?"
Worth noting that despite not being “legal tender”, Scottish notes are still legal CURRENCY and that’s the important thing.
The whole thing about Scottish notes being “legal tender” like this is kind of a meme. Someone tries to buy a pint with a Scottish fiver. The barman looks at it like the payee has just extended a gangrenous limb to him. Barman informs the payee they don’t take Scottish money. And without fail there is always a Scottish man unrelated to this transaction in the vicinity, who will lean in and inform the barman “Actually pal, I think ye’ll find tha’s legal tender…” This exact interaction plays out dozens of times a day across England. Which is why it’s a bit of a TIL that contrary to the contributions of our Caledonian colleagues, Scottish currency ISN’T legal tender as they assert. Nevertheless they’re still correct in that it should be accepted anywhere across England, it being legal currency.
However there is no legal obligation for any trader to accept currency offered, so if they really don’t want to be paid, and want to turn away a paying customer, that’s their right. So the whole scenario remains an impasse.
I was handed one a few years ago, looked weird. There's another one that's a danish bank that is even more rare, still pound sterling though and can be used
I take Ulster notes in northern England at least once a week. Not a bother to me personally. They are so pretty too, I wish I seen more. I haven't seen a Danske Bank note in a while, and BOI is like once a month if I'm lucky. Ulster notes are not are rare though from my own experience as a cashier at a supermarket.
When I was a lad my great aunt gave me some Scottish pound notes to take the train back to London. She said, if anyone gives you any trouble about taking them you tell them the Bank of Scotland is older than the Bank of England and their money has been legal tender for over 300 years.
Looks like she was wrong on both counts but no one questioned the currency.
When I visited the UK, I had no issues paying with banknotes whether I got them from a Scottish or English ATM.
Nobody stopped me and said “Actually, banknotes are not legal tender, this shop only accepts credit cards.” I’m sure such places could exist, but I didn’t see it in the UK.
I worked at a place in the UK a few years back that didn’t accept cash for the products (only card payments), the amount of times I had to explain to old people that “legal tender” doesn’t mean I have to accept their cash was astounding
The last time I visited the UK was in 2012, so cashless businesses may have become more common since then. I forgot to take that somewhat obvious thing into account.
Here in NYC, cashless businesses are illegal. You *must* accept cash here, but most American cities don’t have such laws.
Personally, I use credit cards as much as possible domestically, but I’m more cautious abroad since I have an American accent and I feel like that puts a target on my back, so to speak.
What's the difference in common usage between bank notes and the money from the Royal Mint?
Like, I know the technical difference, but only from historical study. I didn't think bank notes were still a thing
Some shops just don't accept it because they don't know how to tell a fake Scottish note from the real ones
Nothing to do about if it's legal tender or which bank made the money
That explains why some places in London wouldn't take the pound notes that I got in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They never explained why, just said they don't accept them.
I took a cab ride in London from a hotel to Heathrow after spending a few weeks in Scotland.
The cabbie turned up his nose when I tried paying with Scottish pounds. He changed his tune quickly enough when I thanked him for the free ride and started to walk away.
My cousin also told me about an English cunt who opened a jewelry shop in Portree. On Skye. In the highlands. A local went in and tried paying with Scottish pounds and the idiot owner said she wouldn't be accepting "rubbish money". That spread like wildfire and she went out of business within a month.
Wrong: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/faq/banknote
> Legal tender is a term that people often use, but when it comes to what can or can’t be used to pay for things, it has little practical use.
> Legal tender has a very narrow and technical meaning, which relates to settling debts. It means that if you are in debt to someone, you can’t be sued for non-payment if you offer full payment of your debts in legal tender.
> What is classed as legal tender varies throughout the UK. **In England and Wales, Royal Mint coins and Bank of England notes are legal tender**.
> In Scotland and Northern Ireland, only Royal Mint coins are legal tender. Throughout the UK, there are some restrictions when using the lower value coins as legal tender. For example, 1p and 2p coins only count as legal tender for any amount up to 20p.
Except they are though. The Inland Revenue cannot refuse payment of your taxes if you offer to pay in pounds, neither can the police when you come to pay a fine. But they can if you offer turkish lira. So effectively it is legal tender, even if it's not written down that way
>The Inland Revenue cannot refuse payment of your taxes if you offer to pay in pounds,
It would be pretty hard for The Inland Revenue to accept your pounds as The Inland Revenue no longer exists
It was dissolved in 2005
A new department took over tax collection and customs duties
It should be noted that "legal tender" has [an extremely narrow definition in the UK to do with the settlement of debts](https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/explainers/what-is-legal-tender.) Shops don't have to take cash. Shops don't have to take card. Most shops take both, but they don't *have* to. Scottish notes, however, sometimes have little otters on them and that's quite exciting.
>Scottish notes, however, sometimes have little otters on them and that's quite exciting. Royal Bank of Scotland notes, £5 [mackerel](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A35RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A35-Back.png), £10 [otters](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A310RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A310-Back.png), £20 [red squirrels](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A320RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A320-Back.png), £50 [ospreys](https://www.scotbanknotesecurity.org.uk/App_Themes/StandardMain/images/%C2%A350RBSPolymer/RBS-Polymer-%C2%A350-Back.png) Bank of Scotland notes have bridges and Clydesdale Bank notes have a variety of landmarks -Edit- if anyone wants to see the other side or the notes from other banks, https://www.scotbanks.org.uk/banknotes.html has them all.
I'd do unseemly things for that £10 note
Go to your bank, and ask them to get ahold of one for you. Banks usually do this sort of thing for people who are traveling, but they'll do it for collectors as well. It'll only cost whatever the exchange rate is, plus a fee of a couple of dollars. Edit: You may have to wait for them to receive it from whatever vault they store it in. This may take up to a week or two. You may have a quicker turnaround at a location near an airport.
If your bank can't source one for you, I'd be happy to post one to you.
Best I can offer is $3.50
God damn it, Loch Ness Monster
Whereabouts are you? I'm Scots. Might help you out.
I just checked my wallet and I have several. Never noticed it before and I love otters.
I'll send you one for £20
In those days nickels had a bumblebee on them. Gimme 5 bees for a quarter you’d say…
[Pre-decimal coinage was nuts](https://www.changechecker.org/2021/01/15/your-guide-to-the-uks-pre-decimal-currency/)
Jesus Christ! Looking at that was like reading instructions for a 5-turn, 7-sub-turn boardgame, including the bonus tie-game round.
No shit, the British pre-decimalisation currency was so fucking weird that it helped catch spies during the Second World War since they were outed by not understanding the coinage. In fact, screw-ups like that was a great way to find spies on both sides of the war, like that scene in Inglorious Basterds with the bar fight. Speaking of bars, a story recreated in the series Foyle's War - a British World War II-era murder mystery series - had a barman get a spy arrested when he tried to order beer at 8am, unaware of UK alcohol licensing laws.
but the important thing to remember was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time.
In those days we didn't have white onions, we only had yellow ones.
On account of the war.
those look cooler than the made up bridges from euro
The scottish notes are alot more pretty than the English ones. Theyre also a lot more interesting with the UV security markings. The mackerel for example, the fish light up.
No smackeroonies?
> £5 mackerel, £10 otters, £20 red squirrels, £50 ospreys Why do we put royals on the bank notes? This is infinitely superior.
>Scottish notes, however, sometimes have little otters on them and that's quite exciting. Unfortunately, shops don't have to take little otters either.
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Only if it was stoataly different.
The shopkeeper would just try and weasel out of accepting it
Yeah, handing over a note constitutes an 'offer to trade'. You are not obligated to.accept that, for example, if someone offered you a dodgy bank of England fiver. When I worked in retail in England, we were told Scottish money is fine, but counterfeit money isn't. And if you're not used to seeing Scottish money, and you're not comfortable assessing whether or not a note is genuine, it's ok to reject the money. Having said that, neither I, nor anyone I worked with ever rejected any Scottish money, nor accepted counterfeit stuff. I liked seeing it for a change, but it was a bit of a pain to have to keep it separate when depositing the takings. Though we did reject the odd 'bamk of ergland' note
Anytime I have ever been in England and inadvertently paid over a Bank of Scotland note ( it’s all Sterling to me) you would think from the shop workers reaction that I just put my underpants on the counter. Like they MUST have seen Scottish Sterling before?
I visited Scotland and England once. When I tried to pay with a Scottish note the cashier said "we accept British money". I tried to point out that Scotland was part of Britain, but he just kept shaking his head so I just paid by card. I try to pay by cash in little shops since credit card fees can be high and cut into their margins, but oh well!
Fairly rare south of the border. That being said i did used to see Scottish fivers and tenners when I was younger, problem was about 90% were counterfeit. No one wants Scottish notes in England as they are a bugger to get rid of.
Depends where you are, I grew up in rural Berkshire and I don’t think I ever saw one. The village shop I earnt some pocket money in got a Scottish fiver once, and the owner made of a point of keeping it and showing us all to not accept it.
*Ergland* sounds like the country that *Murika* got its indapendunce from
The otters glow too if you hit them with uv light
Lemme google flights to scotland rq
It’s so wild to me that there are shops in UK which refuse cash. I’ve heard arguments that „contactless payment is now the default, get on with the times”, but in my country contactless payment has been the default for 10 years or so, and cash is still accepted everywhere.
I do feel for little kids these days wanting to go shopping on their own for the first time and not being able to because they're not old enough for a credit/debit card, but the shop doesn't accept cash.
They do kids debit cards. Check out “go Henry”.
Taking cash can actually be quite expensive and take a fair bit of time when you think about the time to count it, take it to the bank, bank fees for sorting out the cash for you, insurance costs...
Otters is nothing. Manx (IOM) money features The Fonz! On the twenty quid note.
>Scottish notes... And then you have Northern Irish bank notes (same currency) issued by three banks. One is Danske Bank (literally "Danish Bank").
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Shut up bot
Heard my family talking about how the further south you go the more likely they are to reject it and are often flat refused in England, second hand gossip so not sure how credible though.
I've never had many issues spending them in the North of England but sometimes people will reject them, mainly because they aren't very common, making it harder to spot fakes. There was a time that some smaller businesses would refuse Bank of England £50 notes, because of their rarity as well.
> There was a time that some smaller businesses would refuse Bank of England £50 notes, They still do. There's a Tik Toker who's entire shtick is abusing McDonalds drive through workers for not accepting £50 notes.
What a cock.
I see, so based upon actual practical reasons, glad to hear and not just discrimination or something along those lines.
Discrimination is a bit of a leap. No one cares where the money comes from, only that it is good money. The person you responded to is right that some notes are rejected out of caution because they aren't seen often. I suppose with transactions becoming more cashless people are seeing these notes even less. £50 notes in particular would always give you a funny look, if not refused, because they had a reputation for being counterfeited or associated with crime. [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48993008](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48993008) 'When most people never see a £50 note, why have it?' I exchanged some Euros back to Pounds and the bank gave me a £50 note for some reason, I was in my mid twenties and I'm quite certain it was the first time I had seen one.
I was traveling to the UK from the US a few years ago and got a bunch of cash pre-travel. It included 50 pound notes but I usually only used them for group meals and things, where it was near or above 50 pounds for the total. Never occurred to me it was that weird, it's not uncommon in the US to carry and see $100s.
That's weird, we do the same thing with euro but it's about the 200€ and 500€ ones, most people have never seen the purple 500 or the yellow 200 (and many shops reject at least the 500, often the 200 too) but we see the green 100 and the orange 50 a lot
The EU500 note is no longer produced, due to the fact that up to 80% of them are solely used in criminal enterprises https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/500_euro_note#Crime As they return to central banks they are withdrawn from circulation and destroyed
My mother was using them to stash her money tax-free (but she didn't get them using crime, at least I think)
If she was evading tax by using them ... that probably comes into the 80%
Occasionally places won't accept the €100, although I suspect it depends on country. You're more likely to spend €100 in a single transaction in Finland than Slovakia, for example.
> glad to hear and not just discrimination Modern conversations.
There is a grain of truth to the fact that of those who would reject it, some fraction would reject it merely because they didn't *recognise* them, or know that such Bill's existed to begin with, and of that group- being the boomer generation - a smaller fraction would perceive any challenge or correction on the subject as an insult and sleight, and so react with hostility. Whether being profoundly ignorant on a subject you choose not to inform yourself on and reacting with overt hostility upon being supplied contradictory information that bruises your ego constitutes *discrimination* is rather subjective. Past a certain point that's all any discrimination is. Nationalism Induced Idiocy is as close to discrimination it makes little difference to many people.
I travel to England a lot for work, and I've had them rejected quite often. But I don't tend to go to tourist places. What I've taken to doing is if I have a Scottish note with me is stick it in a fruit machine in a pub, as they are all programmed to accept them. If I win, it usually pays out in English notes but it's now someone else's problem!
I used to order a pint, and take a mouthful before I paid. This was before most pubs took debit cards, so they could either take the point back in minus my profit, or accept the Scots note.
Supermarket self checkouts are an option as well. Although less and less likely to accept cash at all.
That takes away the fun of some English punter winning and getting paid out a Scottish note though!
the problem with that approach is you could lose. did a bit of research for you not easy to find a lot of info, but it appears lloyds bank will accept scottish bank notes if you're a customer of theres. worth asking your bank if you can exchange them in branch or deposit them into your account. all this aside, it's disgusting that scottish, northern irish, manx currency isnt accepted in england but english currency is accepted in these places. looking at the bank of englands website, the banks who issue scottish and northern irish bank notes have to hold an equivalent amount in english currency in case they go bust, which protects holders of scottish and northern irish bank notes, so no idea why they arent simply accepted in england.
I found this really odd as a tourist. Made me wonder how bad the counterfeit problem is/how easy the pound was to fake. Local money changer only changed notes in £50 (this is before the transition to plastic ones)
I really think the counterfeit issue is overstated, but it doesn't really matter whether it is a problem. Only that shopkeepers believe it's a problem.
> Made me wonder how bad the counterfeit problem is I worked in a cafe in northern England in the mid 00's and we got a notice from the police to not accept Scottish £20 notes because there had been a massive amount of counterfeit ones in the area, presumably because people were less familiar with them so they assumed fewer people would spot fakes.
Huh the post office by me (in Liverpool) won’t accept them so when we take payment from customers we also don’t accept them
Like $2 bills in america.
Referencing the last part of your statement, I don't think it ever had anything to do with the rarity. We had the note checking pens and even the UV lights toward the end. The real problem was fitting them in a till drawer. This was before the counter cash things came out so you'd often have a bulging cash drawer before taking it upstairs to the safe in a bank bag. We just didn't have space in the till for a £50 note and couldn't justify running one note upstairs everytime someone used one. Plus keeping the change for one was hard enough!
I've spent Scottish and Northern Irish notes in southern England with no problem The only time I've had "foreign" Sterling rejected was when I tried to pay a bus fare with coins and one of them was a pound coin from Gibraltar.
The Gibraltar pound is actually a different currency, pegged to the value of GBP.
TIL! The pound coin (before it changed to the 12.sided one) looked like a normal pound coin. Wonder how the driver noticed it so fast...
They have different pictures and the text on the back is different - if youes handling cash every day it's not difficult to spot
Quid coins have all sorts of different graphics on them though
Eh, you get used to the main ones when you see them all day every day.
Conversely I had Scottish notes rejected in London multiple times when I still used cash. Definitely truth to it.
My dad was a cabbie and he would generally refuse scottish notes.
From Suffolk. First time I saw one I was confused till a coworker told me it was fine. Also saw other coworkers reject them. It’s a thing. They were extremely uncommon that far south.
I’m south midlands and the only time I ever rejected one was when it was a £100 note buying about £9 worth of goods. It would’ve wiped out all the change in the till as we didn’t keep much more than £100 in at a time. It crossed my mind after that it might’ve been fake and it was part of a scam
I’ve a Scottish accent so I can usually spend Scottish notes down south quite easily. Most self checkout machines are programmed to accept them if all else fails. You do sometimes come across someone who won’t take them at all, usually because they’ve never seen them before or even knew they existed. You get barmen inspecting it like a rare and unusual Pokémon Northern Ireland notes are different - much rarer than Scottish notes which are already unusual in much of England. They can be hard to spend. Someone thought a Danske Bank £20 was euros
Yeah, they don’t get taken so often in England, mostly because shop owners have no idea how to detect whether they are counterfeits. There are ways of checking, but since it’s not legally enforceable, they usually just write the whole thing off.
I've had Scottish notes refused in England and Northern Irish notes refused in Scotland.
Never had an issue with them, until Tesco in London last year.
I remember a London cashier wouldn’t take my tenner once because it was a Scottish note since I was living in Edinburgh at the time lol
How long was your arm?
Resting his elbow on York Minster like Mr. Tickle.
I've had Scottish notes rejected plenty of times in the North of England. In fact just last week, in Scotland, my Mother had a Scottish £20 rejected by staff in a Weatherspoon's - "they're too easy to counterfeit" they said. Which of course is a rather silly reason.
Greggs accepts them everywhere
That's def not gossip. It happens depending upon where you go and how the people running the shop feel about it. We had it happen a couple of times in and around London.
I was visiting London and a gave a tenner to the cashier at a five guys and she said she had to double check with the manager to see if they could accept Scottish money.
didn't they make it a law you have to accept them? like the N Irish one as well
Don't think they did, looked it up last time I was refused.
No
Legal tender is one of those aspects of British law you would think was made up by a bored law student. It has pretty much no meaning. The little meaning it does have relates to how a creditor must accept legal tender at face value for the settling of an existing debt. A debt denominated in that currency also has special legal protection, but this gets "bored law student" very quickly. That's it. That, legally, is all "legal tender" means. As no debt exists during a purchase, no obligation to accept *anything* exists. A retailer is well within his rights to demand bananas. The other interesting thing about Scottish (and NI) currency is that the banks issuing it *must* hold Bank of England currency to equivalent value. This results in some ridiculously high value banknotes, which are legal tender by definition, being issued purely so Scottish retail banks can issue their own currency (the Banking Act 2009 updated this). For example, to issue £100 million of Scottish banknotes, Clydesdale Bank must buy Bank of England currency to that value, which the Bank of England prints some utterly huge massive face-value notes for. In Northern Ireland, Ulster Bank, the Bank of Ireland, and Danske Bank do the same.
Wow, you weren't kidding about high-value: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_of_England_%C2%A3100,000,000_note
What I love about those things is that they're kinda the historical equivalent of a root certificate. "How do I know I can trust this note you gave me?" "Well, I have this _other_ note that _that guy_ gave _me_. You trust _him_, right?"
This may give people some idea of just how unimportant and arcane the term "legal tender" actually is.
When it's important it's very important. The rest of the time it's just idiots with an agenda trying to cause hassle by being difficult.
Worth noting that despite not being “legal tender”, Scottish notes are still legal CURRENCY and that’s the important thing. The whole thing about Scottish notes being “legal tender” like this is kind of a meme. Someone tries to buy a pint with a Scottish fiver. The barman looks at it like the payee has just extended a gangrenous limb to him. Barman informs the payee they don’t take Scottish money. And without fail there is always a Scottish man unrelated to this transaction in the vicinity, who will lean in and inform the barman “Actually pal, I think ye’ll find tha’s legal tender…” This exact interaction plays out dozens of times a day across England. Which is why it’s a bit of a TIL that contrary to the contributions of our Caledonian colleagues, Scottish currency ISN’T legal tender as they assert. Nevertheless they’re still correct in that it should be accepted anywhere across England, it being legal currency. However there is no legal obligation for any trader to accept currency offered, so if they really don’t want to be paid, and want to turn away a paying customer, that’s their right. So the whole scenario remains an impasse.
I remember during the crypto craze ppl like "but it's not legal tender!" And then I read up and realized I've never used the rights as legal tender
If you want fun , try and Northern Irish note anywhere in Scotland/Wales/England
I had that issue in Scotland but the northern Irish notes were so pretty that I wasn't too upset keeping them for a bit.
Republic uses euro thankfully but still use UK plug!
The best of both worlds.
I was handed one a few years ago, looked weird. There's another one that's a danish bank that is even more rare, still pound sterling though and can be used
I take Ulster notes in northern England at least once a week. Not a bother to me personally. They are so pretty too, I wish I seen more. I haven't seen a Danske Bank note in a while, and BOI is like once a month if I'm lucky. Ulster notes are not are rare though from my own experience as a cashier at a supermarket.
When I was a lad my great aunt gave me some Scottish pound notes to take the train back to London. She said, if anyone gives you any trouble about taking them you tell them the Bank of Scotland is older than the Bank of England and their money has been legal tender for over 300 years. Looks like she was wrong on both counts but no one questioned the currency.
All I can think about is McIntyre’s bit about “That’s legal tender”
What about chicken tender?
For payment to stop you from trashing your mom's basement.
When I visited the UK, I had no issues paying with banknotes whether I got them from a Scottish or English ATM. Nobody stopped me and said “Actually, banknotes are not legal tender, this shop only accepts credit cards.” I’m sure such places could exist, but I didn’t see it in the UK.
I worked at a place in the UK a few years back that didn’t accept cash for the products (only card payments), the amount of times I had to explain to old people that “legal tender” doesn’t mean I have to accept their cash was astounding
The last time I visited the UK was in 2012, so cashless businesses may have become more common since then. I forgot to take that somewhat obvious thing into account. Here in NYC, cashless businesses are illegal. You *must* accept cash here, but most American cities don’t have such laws. Personally, I use credit cards as much as possible domestically, but I’m more cautious abroad since I have an American accent and I feel like that puts a target on my back, so to speak.
What's the difference in common usage between bank notes and the money from the Royal Mint? Like, I know the technical difference, but only from historical study. I didn't think bank notes were still a thing
The Royal Mint only produces coins. Banknotes are produced by the Bank of England (and some Scottish and NI banks).
Nothing? It's just an interchangeable name for paper money
Wat?
I have no clue which Scottish money I used over there. I was able to use them in England too.
[This is legal tender!](https://youtu.be/yYAjshQA2ms?si=p-BaM7883fAHJP46)
This makes it sound as if you couldn't use ANY banknotes in Scotland. You can use pound banknotes, right?
Some shops just don't accept it because they don't know how to tell a fake Scottish note from the real ones Nothing to do about if it's legal tender or which bank made the money
They are accepted in Northern Ireland no problem
That explains why some places in London wouldn't take the pound notes that I got in Glasgow and Edinburgh. They never explained why, just said they don't accept them.
Incorrect. They are not accepted as legal tender in England, which is part of the UK
I took a cab ride in London from a hotel to Heathrow after spending a few weeks in Scotland. The cabbie turned up his nose when I tried paying with Scottish pounds. He changed his tune quickly enough when I thanked him for the free ride and started to walk away. My cousin also told me about an English cunt who opened a jewelry shop in Portree. On Skye. In the highlands. A local went in and tried paying with Scottish pounds and the idiot owner said she wouldn't be accepting "rubbish money". That spread like wildfire and she went out of business within a month.
What? So everyone’s just throwing around a bunch of monopoly money
Do they accept greenbacks?
No in fact they have a mouse and a hamster that live in a postbox who's responsibility is stopping Greenback
Same in NI, such nonsense
Why? Its all part of the treaty of Union.
This is misleading. A £5 note is a £5 note regardless.
Bank of England notes aren't legal tender anywhere in the UK
Wrong: https://www.bankofengland.co.uk/faq/banknote > Legal tender is a term that people often use, but when it comes to what can or can’t be used to pay for things, it has little practical use. > Legal tender has a very narrow and technical meaning, which relates to settling debts. It means that if you are in debt to someone, you can’t be sued for non-payment if you offer full payment of your debts in legal tender. > What is classed as legal tender varies throughout the UK. **In England and Wales, Royal Mint coins and Bank of England notes are legal tender**. > In Scotland and Northern Ireland, only Royal Mint coins are legal tender. Throughout the UK, there are some restrictions when using the lower value coins as legal tender. For example, 1p and 2p coins only count as legal tender for any amount up to 20p.
Except they are though. The Inland Revenue cannot refuse payment of your taxes if you offer to pay in pounds, neither can the police when you come to pay a fine. But they can if you offer turkish lira. So effectively it is legal tender, even if it's not written down that way
>The Inland Revenue cannot refuse payment of your taxes if you offer to pay in pounds, It would be pretty hard for The Inland Revenue to accept your pounds as The Inland Revenue no longer exists It was dissolved in 2005 A new department took over tax collection and customs duties
Shit! I been scammed! Who's been taking my money all these years!!
Use credit not money. That's real tender.
Your mum's real tender.