Under guise of preventing fraud the ECB voted to kill the €500 note.
Fraud was not the real reason. The real reason was to make it more difficult for banks to store physical cash to avoid negative interest penalties.
Cash Under the Mattress
Please consider Banks Seek Cheap Way to Store Cash Piles as Rates Go Negative.
The idea of keeping piles of cash in high security vaults may sound like something from an old movie plot, but some banks and insurers have recently started considering the idea as interest rates sink below zero across much of Europe.
After the European Central Bank’s most recent rate cut in March, private-sector banks are paying what amounts to an annual levy of 0.4 per cent on most of the funds they keep at the eurozone’s 19 national central banks.This policy, which has cost banks around €2.64bn since ECB rates became negative in 2014, is intended to spark economic growth by giving banks the incentive to lend money out to businesses instead of holding on to it.
European central bankers say they could cut rates again should economic conditions worsen, but private bankers and insurers are already thinking of creative ways to avoid those charges altogether.
One way is by turning the electronic money they keep at central banks into cold, hard cash. Munich Re has experimented successfully with storing a double-digit million sum of euros in cash at what the insurer describes as a manageable cost. A few other German banks, including Commerzbank, the country’s second-biggest lender, have also considered taking the step. But when a Swiss pension fund attempted to withdraw a large sum of money from its bank in order to store it in a vault, the bank refused to provide the cash, according to local media reports.
If this practice becomes widespread, it would have big economic implications. If banks are not paying central bank interest charges, then they will not be as affected by further official interest rate cuts. They therefore would not be spurred to lend out more money.
