Useful and useless in my wallet

Last week I picked up my ZTM Karta Miejska (urban transport authority City Card). I was amazed at the fact that a) I could choose whatever pictorial design I wanted - regular readers will recognise the illustration by Jan Lenica from Julian Tuwim's Lokomotywa - and b) it was ready for collection within two days of me applying for it online (which you can do here). I uploaded a month's worth of Zone 1 travel (78 zlotys or a mere sixteen quid). Zone 1 is nine miles (give or take) from the city centre - the same radius as Zone 3 in London. A monthly TfL travelcard for London (Zone 3) costs one hundred and sixteen quid. If I want to get even more value for money, I'd be buying a quarterly (90-day) Karta Miejska contract for 196 zlotys or 41 quid - or 2.10 zlotys (40p) a day. The Karta Miejska is a great institution.

Unlike the two hundred zloty note (below), Poland's largest denomination banknote. The cash machines at PKO BP have of late started producing these. On Monday morning, I withdrew 400 zlotys and unwontedly got two 200 złoty notes. Since then, I've been wandering around Warsaw unable to do anything with them. I can buy neither food nor coffee nor newspapers. Kiosk vendors laugh at me when I show them the money. Today Mariola bought me a paper and Matthew bought me lunch. I'm a trained journalist reduced to the status of a bum. The BBC this week ran a story about the €500 note being a problem. This is a sum of money worth ten times more than the 200 zł note. Yet Poles are only three-and-half times poorer than the citizens of the eurozone. So why the 200 zł note's pariah status?

It's to do with the Polish banking system's inability to circulate sufficient loose change into the economy, something I wrote about here. A kiosk owner, looking at a 200 zł note sees his entire morning's cash float disappearing in one single small-value transaction.

I should have ordered 350 zł from the cash machine - one stoover and three fifties. No problem with fifties. Stoovers are more problematic, but nowhere near as difficult to get shot of as 200 zł notes.

The whole business has prompted me to consider what the purpose of high-value banknotes is in any economy other than an instrument to avoid the taxman. Whenever I pay more than 50 złotys (11 quid or so) for anything, I use a debit or credit card. What's the sense of holding the cash? What is the point of any central banker printing large denomination notes?

Roll on the payment revolution. Mobile banking and mobile payment. I upload money from my bank account to my mobile phone account, and via a proximity chip in my phone (using NFC - near-field communication technology), I can make small-value transactions such as a newspaper or cup of coffee without having to reach for coins or notes or worry about change.