News

UK millennials plan to foist paper 'tenners' onto friends

March 1, 2018

Britain's paper 10 pound note officially goes out of circulation today, giving way to the new plastic "tenner" featuring Jane Austen. This means that the paper notes can no longer be spent in shops and will be exchanged by banks only at their discretion.

In fact, the only sure way to exchange the old paper notes is through the Bank of England, where Brits can always trade in their paper notes for plastic, either by post or in person.

However ... 2 million of the nation's millennials have an alternative plan: They'll unload their old paper notes by using them to pay back money owed to friends, according to a survey by Paym, the U.K. mobile payments service.

According to the research, 1.95 million people in the U.K. (3 percent of the population) would try to use their old "tenners" to settle IOUs with friends. Of these, 1.22 million are 18–24 years of age, and another 600,000 are age 25–34, Paym calculates.

Of the remaining survey respondents, 10 percent of people will attempt to spend their old notes in shops, 44 percent will attempt to exchange them at a bank and, incredibly, 1 percent will simply throw them away.