Time is running out for the paper £10 note, which ceases to be legal tender at 11:59pm on Thursday March 1st 2018.
You should hopefully have already had any note slots on your fruit machines and gaming machines adapted to accept the new polymer £10 note since it entered circulation last September.
But with the paper £10 still in many people’s wallets and purses in the months since then, you may have opted to accept both versions until now.
It is time to put a stop to that – for obvious reasons.
After March 1st 2018, the paper £10 will no longer be legal tender in the UK, and the only place that will be obliged to exchange them for the polymer replacement will be the Bank of England itself.
That means that if you have note slots that currently still accept the paper £10, you could face a situation where somebody wins a big payout using money that is not actually legal tender.
While the Bank of England will still exchange the old notes, you would most likely face a trip to London to get them changed – which might prove to be false economy if you end up with a relatively small number of paper notes.
It’s easy to update gaming machines and fruit machines to stop them from taking the paper £10 note, especially if you’ve already had them upgraded to accept polymer £5 and £10 notes in recent years.
Assuming the machine is compatible with polymer £5 notes and has already been adjusted to reject paper £5 notes, it should be perfectly possible to do the same for £10 notes too.
In many cases it’s just a software update that is required, and by this stage the only hardware replacements that might be needed should be for machines that have not yet been adapted for polymer banknotes at all.
Incidentally, if you do still have gaming machines on your premises that have never been adapted for polymer notes, it is even more important to get them upgraded for the new currency, as the old paper £5 is already well out of circulation.
As always, the days immediately around the changeover date will be the busiest as businesses call in the engineers at the last minute – and it’s reasonable to want to accept paper £10 notes right up to the deadline.
The sooner you can get an engineer visit booked in, the better it will be, and if there are any February slots still available by the time you book, it’s smart to get paper notes deactivated while you still have time to get any last takings paid into the bank before March 1st.