European Central Bank Ends Production And Issuance Of €500 Banknote

The BEST part was the email I received less than 20 minutes BEFORE the one above. Contents below.


Dear Customer,

Last year, we sent you an email letting you know that, as part of our commitment to make things right, Wells Fargo entered into a $142 million class action settlement fund related to the opening of unauthorized accounts. Today, we are writing to let you know that the deadline to submit a claim with the fund has been extended to July 7, 2018.

If you believe Wells Fargo opened a checking, savings, credit card, or line of credit account for you without your permission, or if you purchased identity theft protection from us, you may be entitled to compensation from this fund. If you submit a claim, you may be eligible for reimbursement of fees, compensation for potential impact on your credit, and an additional cash payment based on any money remaining in the fund after benefits and costs are paid out.

If you already submitted a claim, you do not need to submit another. Any claims submitted after the prior deadline (February 3, 2018) will be treated as timely.

To find out more, go to wfsettlement.com or call 1-866-431-8549.

If you have specific questions about any of your accounts or services, please visit your Wells Fargo branch or call 1-800-869-3557. Thank you for being a Wells Fargo customer.

National Central Banks will be able to dispense €500 notes until the end of 2018 (IIRC). Then, they will have to stop. According to news reports here in Germany a few weeks ago commercial banks have been ordering €500 for their vaults to evade negative interest rates at ECB in high(er) numbers during the last months.





I haven't heard about that one.
If possible, please, post a link to a reliable site that has information about this.

Of course, you don't have to abolish cash to prevent tax evasion at stores. That's utter nonsense. But it probably falls on fertile ground in a nordic country. Obviously, Icelanders haven't learnt anything from the financial meltdown a few years ago.

@yellow88 The case against is quite strong and compelling still it will take a couple of years for the class action to be successful if so they would have to refund customers and if you lucky +interest. If you chose to settle well just what you forfiet rights to sue them for the wrongdoings (excuse is they refunded you) but they are only refund you 50c on the dollar. I think dont quote me on that, because its suppose to be confidential agreements *wink*.

Total production of the 500 Euro note was 1,335.8 million banknotes in the history of the Euro.

Production by number of 500 Euro banknotes
2014 85.0 million
2011 56.2
2010 100.0
2009 240.0
2007 190.0
2005 190.0
2004 103.6
init. 371.0

You can see that production was reduced considerably after 2010. Possibly the ECB was questioning the wisdom of such a large denomination banknote. Even in the 1990s Britain was very upset about the EMU creating such a large denomination and urged them to stop at €100. At the time of the creation of the Euro the 50 GBP banknote was worth €57.

The argument in the 1990s for the inclusion of a 500 Euro note was that it replaced the 1000DM banknote of Germany at nearly the same value. As the German Mark was the strongest currency in the new Euro Zone, the people were entitled to the same denominations. But the 12 nations of the Eurozone were circulating banknotes of combined value 380 billion Euros in all denominations of national currencies in the year 2000.

Prior to the transition the largest banknote in many countries was not even close to 500 Euros.
€126.97 Irish 100 pound
€76.22 French 500 franc
€60.10 Spanish 10,000 peseta
€49.88 Portuguese 10,000 escudo
€29.35 Greek 10,000 drachma

Other countries had a large denomination banknote, but the largest in common use was of five times less value
€72.67 Austrian 1,000 schilling (5,000 sch note was rare)
€51.65 Italian 100,000 lira (500,000 lira note was rare)

Since the announcement on 31 Dec 2015 that the 500 Euro note would not be included in the Europa series, circulation numbers went down until Feb 2018 when they almost reached 500 million, but since then they have been slowly creeping up.

The USA kept it's 1928 and 1934 series $500 and $1000 banknote legal tender, but production of those notes was 4 million and 2.7 million for the . Circulation today is thought to be 284K and 165K almost exclusively in collections. Canada's $1000 banknotes still had about 700K notes in circulation even though they stopped printing them in 2000.

Do you think the ECB will make some kind of attempt to seriously cull the outstanding 500 million 500EURO banknotes still in circulation?

List of the world's largest denomination bank notes by country along with its value converted into USD. Any person can walk into a bank in the issuing country and they are available no questions asked. This info is current as of July 2018.

10,000 Singapore dollars ($7,226 USD)
NOTE: Presumably,the Singapore Monetary Authority has announced plans to phase these high-value banknotes out.

10,000 Brunei dollars ($7,226 USD)
NOTE: Thanks to a currency interchangeability agreement from the 1960s, Brunei's currency is freely changeable into Singapore dollars. That means that even as Singapore plans to phase out its own $10,000 note, Brunei can issue the same denomination with the same value.

1,000 Swiss francs ($1,007 USD)
NOTE: The Swiss government has indicated the note is here to stay and their central bank believes that "the size of a banknote had no impact on efforts to combat crime".

1,000 Singapore dollars ($722 USD)
NOTE: See above.

1,000 Emirati Dirhams ($272 USD, permanent peg)
NOTE: "cash" is not a dirty word in the United Arab Emirates, and the central bank reportedly has no plans to discontinue this higher-value note.
Like the Hong Kong dollar, dirhams are pegged to the US dollar at the rate of 3.675 to 1, meaning your dirhams offer any perceived stability of US dollars with the ease of use and convertibility in a country that is happy to deal in actual paper money. It is also a non-extradition country.

100,000 Armenian dram ($207 USD)

1,000 Hong Kong dollars ($129 USD, permanent peg)
NOTE: While Hong Kong's HK$1,000 notes are not worth much more than a $100 bill from the United States, they do offer several advantages over the greenback. For one, Hong Kong actually has a sound monetary policy that means the territory isn't constantly one step away from a currency crash. What's more, the negotiation phase has been progressing for quite some time that Hong Kong de-peg from the narrow band of the US dollar, and instead re-peg to the Chinese renminbi at par, or even discontinue the dollar in favor of RMB altogether. If that were to happen, the Hong Kong dollar would see instant double-digit appreciation. With China assuming greater powers over the islands in 2047, it may be possible. In the meantime, holding Hong Kong dollars is essentially the same as holding US dollars but with potentially greater flexibility.

And I'll leave you all with a pretty neat "fun fact".

According to the US Treasury Dept, FinCen (US), FATF (US), World Bank, United Nations, and just about every single org, gov, financial institution and private biz that studies this matter... the #1 money laundering jurisdiction (i.e. the best and easiest place to launder money) is the United States of America; followed closely by the UK in the #2 spot.

The conservative estimate of the total amount of money laundered by #1 and #2 combined is multiples of the total amounts laundered by #3-#25 combined.

At the end of 2016 the Swiss Central bank reported 48.26 million 1000 CHF banknotes, 57.16 million 200 CHF banknotes, and 129.39 million of the 8th series CHF banknotes in circulation which is clearly more than their 8.3 million citizens need. The new 9th series began issuing in 2017, BUT the new 1000 franc note will be issued in 2019.

At the end of 2016 banknotes and coins as a percent of GDP
United States 8.1%
Euro Zone 10.7%
Singapore 10.4%
Switzerland 12.3%
Hong Kong 16.9%
Japan 20.0%

Low cash countries
Sweden 1.4%
United Kingdom 3.9%
Canada 4.2%

There are 521 million of the 500 Euro banknotes in circulation of the first series, and they will not be issued in the new Europa series which concludes in 2019. While the old banknotes remain legal tender, eventually people will begin to distrust them and they will be hard to spend. It is probable that many people who hold these notes will want to trade them in for brand new Swiss 1000 Franc notes.

Do you think Switzerland is going to end up with some huge percentage of their GDP issued in cash as they feed the desire of other countries for large banknotes? The 13 security features in the latest notes seem almost ridiculous.

Theoretically the Swiss could print 200 million 1000CHF banknotes and distribute them all through Europe

Considering that many US banknotes circulate outside the USA I think the actual number for the US is likely to be similar to the one in Canada. Perhaps a bit higher and around 5%.
Same for the Eurozone. A sizeable amount of Euro banknotes are outside of it.





Even here in Germany, it has always been difficult to spend the €500 note especially during the last couple of years. Many stores and shops won't accept it. The €500 is generally used to ''store value'' only. Not just private citizen use it this way, but also banks. Usually, people exchange the note for lower denominations at banks -- and good luck trying to do that at a bank where you don't have an account -- if they need to spend the money.





Not going to happen. And if, only on a very, very small basis.
People who already ''store value'' in banknotes of Swiss francs will naturally get the new notes. But people who ''store value'' in €500 notes will flock to the new €100 and €200 notes. I don't see a movement (or shift) to get the CHF 1000 note because the €500 will not be updated to second series. There will only be a run on the Swiss Franc in general and the CHF 1000 note if there's going to be a huge financial crisis in the Euro zone or with the Euro.