More than half of $100s are held abroad

That and other interesting facts about U.S. currency can be found in The $100 Bill Is America’s Most Common Currency, and Its Most Annoying: The amount in circulation has more than doubled in recent years, but $100s are hated by both cashiers and economists by Oyin Adedoyin of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"The $100 bill is far and away the most common U.S. paper currency, dwarfing even the $1 bill. The number of bills bearing Benjamin Franklin’s mug more than doubled between 2012 and 2022, faster growth than any other denomination"

"Some 60% of all payments are made with debit or credit cards, according to Federal Reserve data. Cash use dropped sharply during the pandemic in 2020, and it hasn’t fully recovered. Today, cash is the third-most used payment method in the U.S. by number of transactions."

"more than half of $100s are held abroad"

"One reason they have become so prevalent is that they enter circulation far quicker than they leave. They can last over a decade longer than $1s and $5s, partly because people are more likely to hold than spend them."

"Cash is typically reserved for smaller purchases. Customers spent $39 on average when paying with cash, compared with $95 when paying with credit cards"

"The annoyance of using the $100 bill can make people spend less, said Helen Colby, an assistant professor of marketing at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. 

"Research shows that college students are less willing to purchase items when they are given a $100 bill compared with five $20s. This phenomenon has been coined “the denomination effect,” where the form that money comes in has an impact on a person’s desire to spend it.

If you spend money on a credit card, you get that same card back after the transaction. Spending a $100 bill essentially destroys it, she said."

The article also has a good graph showing how many notes of each denomination have been in circulation since the early 2002.

Related posts:

How much cash is out there and where is it? (2018) 

When Money Is No Object: Sure, using a credit card is easy, but paying with invisible money makes saving harder and spending easier. People behaved differently when they saved—and spent—cold, hard cash.  (2021)

Coins are more valuable right now than they normally are (2020)

Is $900 billion in cash missing? (2019)