Barclays customer falls foul of ‘£50 cash rule’ as bank refuses to help | Personal Finance | Finance
A Barclays customer has complained about a rule that leaves no store able to change notes it won’t receive. The customer who went to X complained that they had withdrawn some money from a Barclays cash machine and were given £50 notes.
When they realized this, they thought they would have a hard time spending it, so they stopped by the branch and changed. But they were turned away. On X Julie said: “Just issued £50 notes from @Barclays cash machines. Not accepted in many stores these days.”
And the high street bank responded by saying staff were right to refuse to replace the cash with more usable notes. It read: “Hi Julie, I hope you are well. I’m sorry to hear you’ve had some trouble paying with the £50 note you were given from one of our ATMs. I can understand how frustrating it can be when a shop refuses to accept legal tender!
“Regarding this change to one of our branches, this is correct, you will need to be a Barclays Customer for us to process this and I apologize for any inconvenience this has caused. If you would like to discuss this matter with me further please slide into our DMs and we can take it from there.
“Alternatively, if you would like to find other ways to discuss this issue with us, please visit our contact us page to find out how to do this safely.”
Analysis published last year by LINK, the UK’s cash access and ATM network, showed the UK is moving towards a low-cash society, although at different speeds across the country.
It found that the use of cash has fallen, with the latest industry statistics showing cash usage represents 12% of all payments; That was down from nearly a quarter of all payments in 2020 and down from 60% in 2008.
Total ATM transaction numbers, which include balance inquiries, also dropped significantly. There were 1.73 billion transactions in 2019, a 47% decrease compared to 921 million transactions in 2024. But LINK data shows the average withdrawal value rose from £65 to £85 over the same period.
Link added: “Yet cash is still critical for every high street. Even in the quietest and most remote constituencies, over £400,000 was withdrawn from LINK ATMs every month last year. A total of £79.5bn was withdrawn across the country and surveys show around five million people are still dependent on cash.”
Link CEO John Howells said: “COVID has changed the way we live, the way we work and, for many people, the way we manage our cash. The use of cash remains popular; we were still pulling in £250 million a day in 2024. The fact that more deprived areas are moving away from cash more slowly is a timely reminder that we can’t afford to leave anyone behind and that we need to focus more on digital inclusion as part of the way technology spreads across the UK.”
