The European Central Bank will stop issuing or distributing the €500 banknote from 2018.
The decision was taken on the grounds that the high-denomination currency is far too helpful to criminals and terrorists.
The note was often called “Bin Laden” on the basis that most knew what it looked like but few had ever spotted one.
The announcement came after months of pressure, particularly from France’s renewed fight against terrorism.
The €500 note is “used more for hiding things than buying them”, the French finance minister, Michel Sapin, said earlier this year. “It is used more to facilitate transactions that are not honest than to allow you and me to buy food to eat.”
No data exists to substantiate the link between the bill and crime, but an EU action plan found last year that the notes were “in high demand among criminal elements … due to their high value and low volume”.
“The links between organised crime and cash are multiple,” said Igor Angelini, the head of Europol’s financial intelligence unit. “Criminals need cash at some point in order to cut the trails that could lead back to them.”
The €500 note is one of the highest-value banknotes in the world along with the 1,000 Swiss franc (£720) bill.
The broad push toward electronic payments rather than the anonymity of cash is being resisted by some and an estimated 79% of all transactions in Germany are still conducted in cash. Indeed, it was Berlin which lobbied strongly for a €500 bill when the euro was born because Germans wanted an equivalent to their 1,000 Deutschmark note.
Nevertheless, the note is on its way out now.
"The issuance of the €500 will be stopped around the end of 2018, when the €100 and €200 banknotes of the Europa series are planned to be introduced. The other denominations - from €5 to €200 - will remain in place," the ECB said in a statement.
"In view of the international role of the euro and the widespread trust in its banknotes, the €500 will remain legal tender and can therefore continue to be used as a means of payment and store of value."
