Peter Binning comments re urge to ditch high-denomination notes featured in Payments Compliance

Central authorities are being urged to ditch £50, $100 and €500 bills after a banking luminary claimed the tender no longer has a role in the legitimate economy.

Peter Sands, the former chief executive of Standard Chartered, called for central banks to withdraw high-value notes from circulation as electronic payments had replaced them for costly transactions.

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Peter Binning, partner at the law firm Corker Binning, told PaymentsCompliance that the former Standard Chartered chief was “dead right”.

“There’s absolutely no justification in a modern banking era for high-denomination notes,” he said.

“They [€500] are already prohibited from being issued by bureaux de changes in the UK, so it’s an obvious thing to do to frustrate money launderers and other criminals.”

Although Binning did not name any downsides for consumers from the abolition of high-value bills, he did note that the UK Treasury had an incentive to keep them.

Read the full article in Payments Compliance here.