i don’t understand why so many countries in the developing world have ATMs that dispense bills that are so big they are effectively unuseable. it was like that in egypt and since i arrived in kazakhstan i’ve run into this problem almost every time i have withdrawn money. in the u.s. all the ATMs dispense are $20 bills, with the occasional $10 bill as an exception. they don’t ever dispense $50 and $100 bills because they are not used very often. here in kazakhstan, whenever i withdraw money from an ATM i end up with a bunch of 5,000 tenge bills (which is worth about $33). most places can’t handle a bill that big. some can’t even deal with a 2,000 bill. so getting money here often involves a two step process: finding an ATM that will take my card, and then finding a place that can break the bills to convert what i got from the ATM into useable currency.
five days ago it was even worse. i ran out in the morning to get cash, in preparation for mrs. noz’s departure. my usual machine was out of order so i went to a different place that i usually go. it gave me my cash in 10,000 tenge bills. i didn’t even know that denomination existed before then. if i have so much trouble breaking a 5k bill, how the hell am i supposed to ever use a 10k?
i finally got rid of the last one today. but why do banks here, and a handful of other countries do that? i realize that giving us 2 massive bills is easier for the machine than a bunch of small stuff. but the small stuff is the only stuff that really functions as legal tender in most shops. the big bills not only draw unwanted attention, they also are effectively valueless in most of the places i go.
