$100 BILL, AMERICA'S MOST ANNOYING CURRENCY

 

For all its prevalence, the $100 bill is more effective for storing money than spending it. Even when cashiers do accept the bills, they hold up checkout lines to verify they aren't counterfeits. (Or, at minimum, give an eye-roll along with your change.) Economists have called for slowing down the printing press, due to their use in illicit activity.

Everyone almost questions you and your legitimacy for using a $100 bill, said Sage Handley, 23.

Handley, who works as a marketing and research assistant in College Station, Texas, found a $100 bill in an old makeup bag earlier this month. She posted on TikTok about the embarrassment of spending it, one of many social-media posts mocking the awkwardness of paying for a small item with a $100 bill.

In Midtown Manhattan, cashiers were on alert when a Wall Street Journal reporter tried to use $100 bills to pay for small items. Some held the bill up to the light to spot USA 100 embedded in it to confirm its authenticity. Others used a counterfeit pen, which has ink that turns black when in contact with fake currency.

At a bookstore, a cashier yelled check, please and an employee appeared from behind a tall stack of books to run a $100 bill through a counterfeit bill detector before completing a transaction for $3 of children's books. The store had recently caught a customer trying to use a fake $100.

At a nearby vegan restaurant, a $100 bill was rejected as payment for a $4.95 bottle of kombucha. The store didn't have enough cash in the register. Another customer had walked out that day because the restaurant wouldn't accept the bills, a staffer said.

Some 60% of all payments are made with debit or credit cards, according to Federal Reserve data. Cash use dropped sharply during the pandemic in 2020, and it hasn't fully recovered. Today, cash is the third-most used payment method in the U.S. by number of transactions.

Conner Morton isn't complaining. The director of operations at Prineta, a Kansas City-based company that stocks ATMs, said the company has been loading more ATMs with $100 bills lately. The note is especially popular among ATMs in barbershops, tattoo shops, hotels and convenience stores.

It's five times less work to load the $100 bills than five $20s, Morton said.

To read the complete article, see:
The $100 Bill Is America's Most Common Currency, and Its Most Annoying (https://www.wsj.com/personal-finance/american-dollar-currency-100-bill-c6a47c79)

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