To not understand why English businesses won't accept Northern Irish banknotes

[bunsaremybesties]

I am from Northern Ireland, legally a part of the UK that uses sterling. I am currently on holiday in England. In a shop yesterday there were signs displayed saying "we cannot accept Scottish or Irish notes".

My problems with this are:
(a) the use of the phrase Irish notes - personally I don't really have a strong preference for calling myself either British or Irish, but to my ears, "Irish notes", due to the current real-life currencies used on the island of Ireland, would be euro notes, used in the Republic of Ireland. So of course a shop in England would not accept these, just as it would not accept American notes or Mexican notes. I would have thought Northern Irish notes would have been a more accurate description, as Northern Ireland uses the same currency as England.

(b) what is the reasoning for not accepting "Irish"/Northern Irish banknotes, when they're exactly the same currency as those used in England, Wales and Scotland? While in Northern Ireland we do print our own banknotes, we also regularly use and accept banknotes issued in other regions of the UK. I work in a shop and within any hour block at work, I deal with any number of notes from customers that were issued by the Bank of England, Clydesdale Bank, Bank of Scotland etc. The notes have exactly the same value as those issued by Northern Irish banks like Ulster Bank or Danske Bank, so why on earth wouldn't we accept them? It's not even a consideration in our minds to refuse them. Why is it different in England?

(c) if the justification is that Northern Irish notes are not "legal tender" in England, well then everyone who lives in Northern Ireland is in trouble because in Scotland and Northern Ireland no notes, not even ones issued in those countries, are "legal tender". They are, however, legal currency and so are perfectly acceptable to be used for trade.

Can anyone explain please?

You’d like to think they’re joking wouldn’t you. You’d hope they were.

I'm in Wales, and I've never seen an NI bank note. As a result I'd be a bit wary about getting one in my change.

Yes, it's ignorance, but in its purest form. It's not malicious, it's not that I'm against NI or their banknotes, but if someone hands me an English / Welsh fiver, I'll have a good chance of spotting a fake. An unfamiliar note, significantly less so. So I'd probably ask the shopkeeper to give me the version I'm used to.

In turn, the shop now has a fiver in its float that it can't use, because the customers don't want it in their change. They'll also have the same problem with their staff not knowing what to look for to see if it's fake. Far easier for them to just not accept it in the first place.
Which they're perfectly entitled to do, just like if you tried to give them £200 worth of 2ps.

Now, I could go away and research Northern Irish banknotes so I know what I'm looking for. But given that I've not seen one thus far, I'm unlikely to see another one in the next 20 years, and will have forgotten everything I've learnt by then. So realistically I'm not going to bother.

Besides, give it a year or two and nowhere will be accepting cash at all at this rate!

There are some unreasonable comments here.

I had a dad kick off with me massively when I was running a stall at the primary school summer fair and I wasn't sure if I could accept payment with a NI note.

i'd never seen one in my life - I'm from London and have worked in retail a fair bit.

He was a complete dick about it while I was trying to search on my phone to find out if it was ok to accept (while loads of other parents were trying to pay for stuff). Obviously I had no light pen or any other way to check it. It was a fucking school fair.

He wasn't even from northern Ireland! (Had just been on a trip there)

It is unreasonable to expect that all volunteers etc. will recognise notes that many of us will never have seen in our lives.

Three quarters of banknotes of any description have traces of cocaine.

I'm Scottish and live in the south of England so sometimes end up with Scottish notes if I have been home. I recently got told that "we don't accept foreign money in this shop" which I found really rude. I explained that it it's foreign, it's Scottish and he just repeated the same sentence. I explained that I was not a foreigner as I'm actually British but he just told me he wasn't taking it as it was foreign. I just found him really ignorant and I now refuse to go into that shop.

When I worked in a bank all Scottish NI CI & IofM notes had to be gathered up separately and were returned on the bullion run they were not allowed to be recirculated. This is the same for the shops I worked in, they went underneath and were not to be given back in change. As others have said its the retailers choice to take or not take anything..but taking notes not issued by the bank of England would mean a trip to the bank to pay in. These notes are owned by the bank that printed them and that bank should know how many are in circulation. Notes are recalled from time to time it becomes a one way street then even for b of e notes

They are not legal tender in Scotland either.

OP

It is about ease, if you take a NI or Scottish note you are taking something you may never have seen in your life before, I'm late fifties and I have never seen a NI note and it is at least 20 years since I have seen a Scottish note.

But it is understandable, if you think it is prejudice against Scottish or NI people try spending a £50 note.

Lots of places will not accept a £50 whether it is English, NI or Scottish.

Northern Irish - not Irish - notes.

Yes, it's mainly due to Scottish and Northern Irish notes being easier to forge. Personally, I only ever had a problem once when the notes were still Ulster Bank ones. Got manager over and pointed out the Sterling which he told the cashier to accept.

Never since anywhere in the UK and I do travel between Northern Ireland, Scotland and England.

But these days most people simply use their debit cards rather than physical cash...don't they? 🤔

About 20 years ago I was in London and went to pay in a shop with Scottish notes.The cashier refused to accept them and got annoyed when I said I had no other way of paying so I would just leave the goods I was going to purchase.I left the shop leaving him to cancel the whole sale.

Welsh fiver?

There are NO Welsh banknotes - only Bank Of England, Clydebank, Danske Bank (formerly Ulster Bank) and Bank Of Ireland notes. Apologies if I've forgotten one bank!

But I agree it's not due to prejudice if a Scottish or NI note is refused or treated with scepticism.

Yet most people just use their cards....aye?

Bank Of England notes are NOT legal tender in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Isle Of Man or the Channel Islands either.

But every single banknote is legal currency in ALL British territory! Crucial distinction there.

I didn't mean that Wales had their own notes, but that England and Wales used the same notes.

Given that most of them are made in Llantrisant I've got a petty objection to just calling it English money

You're confused on the concept of legal tender and fixated on it.

Scottish, Northern Irish, Manx and Channel Islands notes are all LEGAL CURRENCY in England and Wales.

This means they CAN be spent legally there.

American Dollars and the Euro notes are NOT legal currency in the UK by any means. So, poor argument and poor analogy from you. 🤦‍♂️

Legal tender is an entirely different concept.

I think it got a lot worse after the Northern Bank robbery.

that said, while in New York I was trying to exchange our notes for dollars and there was a whole wooha about them there too and not recognising them. I had my bag stole so dollars or card, had to get my notes changed in desperation 😭

My Dad once got in a very embarrassing argument with a bookshop owner over not accepting a Scottish note and accused her of fuelling the Scottish nationalist movement. Newcastle and York have never given us any problems ;)

The whole of the UK uses Bank Of England notes. They're simply in addition to locally issued notes.

I called them Bank Of England notes. But there still aren't any Welsh notes. The coins are minted in Wales though.

According to the Bank Of England:

"Our banknotes are printed in Essex, by De La Rue Currency."

Morons?

What about not seeing them frequently enough to have any idea whether they are counterfeit or not?

When staff are held responsible for accepting dodgy notes, they're not being stupid for refusing them, as only an idiot would willingly say 'don't worry random woman of mumsnet, I've never seen or handled a northern Irish twenty before, considering that we are in a village shop in Deepest Kent, but I'll happily take the chance that they're real and refund the company out of my minimum wage zero hours contract because you might pull a cats' arse at me if I don't gamble £165 of my own money on you not being a scamming shite'.

Weird system?!

There are only three note issuing banks in Northern Ireland.

Danske Bank.

Ulster Bank (part of the Natwest group)

Bank Of Ireland.

Exactly the same as in Scotland which you did not call "weird system"!

• Bank of Scotland plc.
• Clydesdale Bank plc.
• The Royal Bank of Scotland plc

All are legal currency in all parts of the UK.

I've never once had an English person tell me Northern Ireland uses Euros and I'm obviously from Northern Ireland!

West County is where I've gone mainly as have English relatives there. Been to the main cities too.

Instead of getting a load of cash out of the machine in NI, why don't you get it out in England on arrival? It almost sounds as though you are trying to manufacture a problem so you can complain about it.

As it goes, in my teens I worked on a checkout 50 miles south of the Scottish border. You mainly check notes as you take hold of them (ie by feel) without thinking or pausing. Naturally, you would look at the Scottish notes as they felt different in the hand, causing you to pause and react. As soon as you'd start to look at it, Scots would jump in saying things like "It is real money you know". They were just waiting to and wanting to pounce. Whatever point they were trying to make, it didn't endear them to any of us.

Scottish notes are really common in the north. No one would bat an eyelid here.

Scottish are commonplace up here and would never be refused.

Yes, it's mainly due to Scottish and Northern Irish notes being easier to forge.

Don't believe this is true - they have just the same security features as English notes. What IS perhaps true is that English people are not as familiar with Scottish and N Irish notes, so a dodgy fake is less likely to be spotted.

Enough with the casual racism.

We use Scottish notes daily and no one refuses them.

NatWest - that bank owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland?? I need to see some evidence that NW were fined for distributing Scottish notes😂