Where does that figure come from Kev?
I offered him £4k today and £5k on Friday.
Nope
I was googling to see if I could find anything official and found this
How Much Cash Can Be Deposited in a UK Bank? - Review42.
Rules should be different for firms that regularly sell ‘high value’ items but I think they are all just very wary.
A well known watch seller advises that they won’t accept cash over £5K on their website so I think it is quite common and not just your showroom being arsey.
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Perhaps there is the possibility of passing counterfeit currency in the wads of cash to consider, as well as money laundering?
Car dealers are just arse. Last time i bought a car from a dealer i walled in knowing which car i wanted. This upset them from the get go. It needed an MOT, so i paid a grand deposit and as the sales twat started the spiel with finance, i just walked as he insisted i sit down and listen, i declined his kind offer. 3 days later i returned, paid the rest by debit card and had to tell them to stop trying to sell me gap insurance and car insurance. The latter was trebble what i could buy at, they even tried to tell me they couldn’t let the car off the forecourt without it. The sales staff get large kick backs on these finance and insurance packages, the car is just the means to sell them.
I am conflicted on the cash issue.
On the one hand, I trust pretty much nothing that any government does, wants, says, claims or dreams about (especially the latter). This is particularly true when it comes to the treatment of those perceived (by the aforementioned govt) to be at the arse-end of society (anyone who isn’t rich or part of the government).
On the other hand, I wonder what the economy would look like if every single eligible business transaction was accurately accounted for with HMRC. I don’t know the answer (does anyone? Is there an economist in the house?), but I’d bet we could (for example) afford a much better NHS, at the very least.
Like almost everything in this fucked-up world, hypocrisy is rife. It’s all me, me, me and fuck everyone else.
I am available for children’s parties. Speak to my agent (cash only). You’ve already screwed your kids’ future with your poor parenting skills, so you will understand my request for a signed disclaimer, you utter cunts. Welcome to Horace’s Party Rainbow of Juvenile Joy. Now pay me, fuck off, and die screaming in a shitty ditch*.
*That’s definitely going on my promotional material.
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All this talk of car showrooms no longer accepting cash is deeply upsetting to someone who harbours the fantasy of plonking down a duffel bag of it to pay for his lambo from his lottery win…
I recently opened a new savings account with RBS. I BACS’d a 5-digit sum into it from an existing account within NatWest Group (no, I haven’t been de-banked by Coutts) and still I had to do it in £9,999 per day chunks. Because somehow moving £10,000 or more from one of my own accounts to another of my own accounts on the same day was dodgier than doing it on different days. Literally unbelievably stupid, but true nonetheless. The modern world eh …
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When I was in the watch world cash was very much the way.
We would buy watches from people selling them for cash, buy from other dealers with cash, sell them and get cash etc.
I would say 90% was cash and we would raise an eyebrow when someone wanted to sell a watch to us and asked for a bank transfer instead.
I remember going to Germany to the Munich watch fair with €100,000.00 in cash.
The only paperwork we had to deal with from purchases was when it was over £10,000.00 and hit the money laundering limit at the time. This was just getting ID copies and one form so was no stress. Did also make sure the drug dealer types always stayed below this limit 
Bit of a change now and I am cashless essentially, the only thing I still take cash out for is when I go clay pigeon shooting as they are cash or cheque only and I have never had a cheque book in my life.
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Maybe it’s a rule of individual banks, I recently moved well in excess of £10K in one lump from one account to another without a problem.
It felt like it was a rule in the electronic transfer system, but that could well have been a NatWest group rule. At one point a NatWest person on the phone said they might be able to arrange a >£10,000 transfer that way, but I was already half way through the daily transfer process and there was no real urgency.
The unbelievable thing was how anyone could think this looked like fraud. They knew with 100% certainty where the money had come from and where it was going and they also knew that only one person or entity (me) was in any way involved. The transfer was entirely within one jurisdiction (the UK).
Maybe it’s an example of a quite common issue these days i.e. that systems are inflexible. They have to be ‘one size fits all’. That inevitably makes them inefficient, but as long as the system operator is mostly just wasting the resource (time, commonly) of other people then why should they give a fuck ? All they need to do is to get a regulator/legislator to force that rule onto their competitors too and their clumsy wasteful process won’t then cost them.
I suspect that rule is all part of the AML risk approach to layering, the more transactions money goes through the harder it is to see where it has originally.
and Diamond Paint Protection, and a service contract (Fetlar to Durham isn’t a day trip!) and an upgraded anti corrosion warranty and an extended roadside assistance package and…
If I’d taken all of the “options” the cost of the car would have risen by ~50% 
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^^ this
There are loads of guidelines and rules but none that specifically specify a reporting threshold. It is down to the banks to have robust policies and procedures in place to identify and report suspicious activity for AML or CFT etc
Not sure if it’s changed but when I used to do call recording and compliance for banks and trading floors the trading guidelines were governed by something called MiFiD but most report any transactions over £10k
Anything they think is suspicious has to be reported by the bank via a STOR (suspicious transaction and order report) or a STR (suspicious transaction report) but that’s different to standard reporting.
Most banks have automated systems to monitor for fraud and laundering etc, this is one we did and it also automatically reports/blocks suspicious transactions
PS the best banks for security I dealt with were Barclays/Barclaycard and HSBC (inc First Direct)
They both had some serious fraud detection software and customer security software, the company I worked for setup the Barclays speech recognition software for cust authentication (Nuance)
Personally I wouldn’t go near HBOS/Halifax or RBS.
I’m talking about commercial banking
I’ve heard of this 5 grand limit for at least a decade,but didn’t know if true or not.
Great to see them clamping down on people buying 2nd hand cars,whilst allowing Russians to buy chunks of London 
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That’s how it should be, I guess. If we really want to root out criminality then it’s going to take thought and effort.
Sadly thought and effort cost money so sometimes organisations might try just cutting that down to a rule - ‘everything over £10k is suspicious and nothing under £10k is’, for example. Or ‘paying cash makes you a crook’. Once the bad guys have adapted to this it will catch hardly any of them, but it will inconvenience me moving money and Paul trying to buy a car.
Unfortunately as Stu points out, the £5k limit creates inconvenience for consumers doing normal transactions while doing little to stop large scale money laundering.
It might help with small scale crime - drug dealers and the like might be inconvenienced by it.
Ultimately it’s very easy to do things by card/phone now. Were I buying a used car I would 100% put at least something on a credit card for the protection. If it’s above the credit limit, bung the money into the card account and then pay it. Job done, easier for everyone and protection for the consumer.
I was actually slightly disappointed that I couldn’t pay for my new car by doinking my phone. They required a bank transfer, which again offers protection as they can match the name.
there is no limit it’s down to the policy of the individual bank or company. I’ve never had an issue making £20k+ payments with the debit card etc
Car dealers like bank transfer as it doesn’t have the debit/credit processing fee attached.