Hard pressed shoppers turn to cash

The sharp rise in the number of £50 notes in circulation shows that shoppers are turning to cash rather using a credit card, says Nick Buckles, chief executive of the security transport company G4S. He told Radio 4: "Cash payments are increasing all the time.”

"Although the retail take is going down, there's more switching on to cash payments, so our processing of cash is actually picking up in terms of volume."
"What we've seen over cycles before is that cash in circulation increases during tougher times. People use it as a means of budgeting. They don't like credit, so clearly there's more cash transactions, more ATM transactions. And I guess the £50 note issue is people hoarding cash at home."

Mr Buckles also revealed European banks had issued £23.8bn of cash in the first two weeks of October - the biggest jump in circulation since 2004.
There were just over 130 million £50 notes in circulation.