Can limits be placed by a merchant on which currency notes are accepted as legal tender? [duplicate]
Can they reject a hundred dollar bill as a payment of debt?! No. A creditor cannot refuse payment in cash, whatever denomination you use. HOWEVER, when you're buying stuff - you don't owe anything to the business owner. There's no debt, so the above rule doesn't apply. As long as there's no debt in existence, the matter of payment is decided between two parties based on the mutual agreement. The demand not to use large bills is reasonable in places like 7/11 or taxi-cab that are frequently robbed, or at a small retailer that doesn't want to invest into forgery detection and fraud prevention. So the answer to this question: Is it the case where this practice of accepting small bills and   rejecting large bills is perfectly legal? Is yes. You can find the full explanation on Treasury.gov, including code references.
"&gt;We were on the ""gold standard"" in name only since about 1910.  There a few nuances behind the ""gold standard"" but all revolve around indebtedness and currency devaluation.   The US actually started off in 1785 with a Silver standard. By the turn of the 18th century there was a fixed ratio of silver and gold to dollars. Silver was not required to back all of the currency, gold was used as well.   This bi-metallic standard continued until 1920s. Gold and Silver were legal tender.   The US treasury was on a strict hard-money standard. Doing business in only gold and silver until 1848 which seperated the Federal Government from the banking system. It was only after this move the federal government started the devaluation/overvaluation of silver in order to ""borrow"" from England. Silver came in, Gold came out. This also largely catalyzed the 1849 Gold Rush.   Then in 1853 the US started reducing the weight of silver coins. In 1857 banks suspended payment in Silver.  But the basic weakness in a gold standard started with GOVERNMENT wanting to manipulate value to unfairly skew debt/loan situations.   &gt;There was not enough gold to remotely back the US currency  This is not true. US currency did just fine, and as governments print, so too do prices go up. So if there is only 50 Billion currency units in existance and eggs cost 10 cents (as they did for previous decades), when the federal government prints its way to trillions thats where we end up with eggs costing 2-3 bucks. That's why your grandparents house cost 6,000 and ones today cost 600,000.   &gt;which is why during the great depression when people started wanting to turn their cash back in to gold there was no enough  No, they turned back to gold because of the devaluation of the dollar. If the dollar was falling as it is today, why would you want to keep your assets in dollars? Gold cannot be printed at whim, this is one of the most important factors. It forces government to be much more strict with debt. If taxpayers were faced with higher taxes or devaluation to pay for the current Iraq/Afganistan wars, would it have happened? No, but since the government could print money at whim, it served as an invisible tax.   &gt;and gold possession had to be outlawed   It was outlawed because as the dollar plummeted and gold was eventually made illegal, the value of gold doubled and rapidly increased overnight, this happened again in 1970 when nixon took us off the gold standard. Gold posession was made illegal to prevent ""hoarders and opportunists"". You make it sound like gold redemption is a bad thing, when really its the government being naughty and citizens simply playing the game and by the rules set up by the government.   &gt;So no, we were not on a gold standard.  Yeah I never said we were. But there is a very important  reason we once were, so government couldnt devalue currency to rack up more debt. (A HUGE issue that has now played out to its logical conclusion, maximum indebtedness mixed with massive mechanisms for manipulation)  &gt;Secondly, when you're on a (any fixed item) standard, your economy only can grow at roughly the rate you fond more of the (fixed item).   Is that why the US did just fine between 1780 and 1913? Over a hundred years. The cost of many items was stable for DECADES. Nowadays we have a doubling effect with cars costing 4,000 in 1970, 26,000 in 2000, 45,000 in 2012. The same with houses, food, education, medical services, you name it.  &gt;There are many reasons for this, and it is partially why for thousands of years of various gold standard there was so little economic growth. Once countries stopped limiting the amount of total economic growth to the amount of gold they could dig up, that economies were able to grow at the sustained rate they have for the past 200ish years.  Wrong again, this is because of productivity from technology and invention, oil, electricity, automobiles, airplanes and eventually computers. Infact as I said above, fiat currency actually kills productivity.   Its hard to compare the turn of the century, but we can see what happened after nixon took us off the gold standard here:   http://azizonomics.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/tfp.jpeg  as soon as the USA left the gold exchange standard,  total factor productivity began to dramatically stagnate.  1.Leaving the gold exchange standard was a free lunch for policymakers: GDP growth could be achieved without any real gains in productivity, or efficiency, or in infrastructure, but instead by just pumping money into the system.  2.Leaving the gold exchange standard was a free lunch for businesses: revenue growth could be achieved without any real gains in productivity, or efficiency.  &gt;So, besides the fact that the US has not in modern history been backed by gold, despite the name, there is ample evidence from hundreds of economies and thousands of years that being on a gold standard = little or no economic growth.  Since nixon took us off the gold standard in terms of dollar connection in anyway to gold the value of the dollar has plummeted 70%. Its over 95% if you go back to the early 1900s and currency debasement.   There was plenty of economic growth while we were on the gold standard and to say otherwise is simply false." "I looked this up on Wikipedia, and was hoping the answer would be ""no - stores cannot refuse legal tender"", but unfortunately, it's not the case!  If the retailer wants to go to the lengths of refusing certain denominations to protect themselves from counterfeit currency, they are fully within their rights to do so. The ""Legal Tender"" page on Wikipedia says this about Canadian bills: [...] Retailers in Canada may refuse bank notes without breaking the law. According to legal guidelines, the method of payment has to be mutually agreed upon by the parties involved with the transactions. For example, convenience stores may refuse $100 bank notes if they feel that would put them at risk of being counterfeit victims [...] What is interesting about what I found out, is that legal tender cannot be refused if it is in repayment of an existing debt (i.e. not a store transaction for which there existed no previous debt).  So you could offload your $100 bills when repaying your Sears credit card account (or pay in pennies if you wanted to!) and they couldn't refuse you!" Need is a strong word. As far as merchants are concerned, if they accept, e.g., Visa credit, they will accept Visa Debit. The reverse is not necessarily true. Up until lately, Aldi would only accept debit cards (credit cards have higher merchant fees), and when I used to got to Sam's Club, they would accept Visa debit, but not credit (they had/have an exclusive deal with Discover for credit). So, yes, they can tell from the card number whether it's credit or debit. However, I've never heard of a case of the situation being biased against debit.*  That said there are some advantages to having a credit card: ETA: I don't know how credit history works in the EU, but in the US having open credit accounts definitely does affect your credit score which directly affects what rate you can get for a mortgage.  *ETA_2: As mentioned in the comments and another answer, car rentals will often require credit cards and not debit (Makes sense to me that they would want to make sure they can get their money if there is damage to the car). Many credit cards do include rental car insurance if you use it to pay for your rental, so that's another potential advantage for credit cards. "Bittcoin is not a currency, it's a store of value, because it is not widely accepted as tender by most people. Even as a store of value, it's not very good. It's volatile and the fact that there is a limited supply of bitcoin is not a good thing. Sure, in the short run it results in speculation that drives up the price of a coin and makes it all the rage among gamblers but I don't think anyone can explain how, if used on a larger scale, wouldn't lead to deflation in the price of goods.   Also, at the end of the day, fiat currencies are based on trust and accountability of the government. How does Bitcoin or any other online currency solve that problem? There's no accountability, and it effectively acts as as an anti-currency, fueled by mistrust in the establishment.   What do you mean, ""cryptocurrencies are growing hundreds of times faster than the market as a whole""?" It depends upon in how many currencies your business is denominated. If your business is solely dependent upon this one payer, it's best to start up a new set of books in USD.  All accounts should be translated from CAD from a date preceding the USD activity.  The CAD books should be closed, and all should be done with the new USD books. If your business will continue to use both USD & CAD, it's best to have two sets of books, one for USD and one for CAD.   Multi-currency books are a nightmare and should be avoided at all costs. Also, with the way you describe your situation, it appears as if you're also blending your household and business books.  This should also be avoided for best practices. I gather that, while it is not illegal for a merchant to pass their payment card processing fees on to their customers directly in the form of a surcharge, doing so is a violation of their merchant agreements with the payment card processor (at least for Visa/MC). It's not - surcharging has been permissible since 2013, as a result of a class action lawsuit against Visa and MC. It's still prohibited by state law in 9 states.  If you're in one of those 9 states, you can contact your state Attorney General to report it. If you're not, you can check to see if the business is complying with the rules set forth by the card brands (which include signage at the point of sale, a separate line item for the surcharge on the receipt, a surcharge that doesn't exceed 4% of the transaction, etc.) and if they're in violation, contact the card company. However, some of those rules seem to matter to the card companies more than others, and it's entirely possible they won't do anything. In which case, there's nothing you can really do. I think the question relates to the discussion here: http://clarkhoward.com/liveweb/shownotes/2010/10/05/19449/ It was always the case that merchants could discount purchases made with cash.  What wasn't allowed is allowing the merchant to charge extra for credit card transactions (presumably to cover the fees the merchants pay).  These fees usually carry a flat fee per transaction, plus around 2% of the purchase price.  What also wasn't allowed was them to refuse any credit transactions.  People could charge a pack of gum, even if the fees put that transaction in the red. What's allowed according to this new development is different levels of discounting for different credit cards. Somewhat related to this discussion is another development that happened this summer: merchants now have the ability to refuse credit card transactions of less than $10. Here's my feeling on all of this.  I think we'll see merchants imposing minimum credit transaction amounts before we see them monkeying at the 1-2% level on pricing for different types of credit cards.  My feeling is that they'd be wise not to change anything, even though they can.  Refusing transactions (or charging more for others) is going to come as a unpleasant shock to enough people that they may take their business elsewhere. US currency doesn't expire, it is always legal tender.  I can see some trouble if you tried to spend a $10,000 bill (you'd be foolish to do so, since they are worth considerably more). Maybe some stores raise eyebrows at old-style $100's (many stores don't take $100 bills at all), but you could swap them for new style at a bank if having trouble with a particular store. Old-series currency can be an issue when trying to exchange US bills in other countries, just because it doesn't expire here, doesn't mean you can't run into issues elsewhere. Other countries have different policies, for example, over the last year the UK phased in a new five pound note, and as of last month (5/5/2017) the old fiver is no longer considered legal tender (can still swap out old fivers at the bank for now at least).  Edit: I mistook which currency you took where, and focused on US currency instead of Canadian, but it looks like it's the same story there.