Your money, you choose

Following recent news that future £50 notes will feature Scottish engineer James Watt and Matthew Boulton and that Henry VIII will appear on limited edition £5 coins, new research by The Co-operative Bank Current Accounts reveals who the nation really wants to see on our bank notes.

Top ten dream ‘faces' of UK bank notes

Prince William (14.5%)
Stephen Fry (10.9%)
Ant & Dec (8.6%)
Prince Charles (7.8%)
Richard Branson (5.1%)
David Beckham (4.6%)
Simon Cowell (4.5%)
Bruce Forsyth (3.2%)
Cheryl Cole (3%)
Boris Johnson (2.2%)

The study also found that when spending more than five pounds, 52% of people in the UK prefer to use their cards instead of cash. Surprisingly, on average, the maximum spend per transaction on cash from men is £450 whereas for women its £310.

At any one time women tend to carry around an average of £24 in cash, whereas men carry £31 cash. Unsurprisingly, most women believe they spend their money quicker when using cards (52%), whilst most men think cash is easier to spend (53%).

The results also reveal that the UK's favourite bank note is the £20 (40%), followed by the tenner (28%), the £50 (17%) and the good old fiver (14%). However, 43% of people would like to see the 1p scraped, followed by 5p (26%), 2p (19%), 10p (3.9%), 20p (3.6%), £1 (2.4%) and even the 50p coin (1.6%).

However, the study found that there are certain things people prefer to pay in cash or card regardless the price. It seems that people prefer to pay bigger lumps of money on card, whereas smaller transactions are usually preferred to be paid in cash by both retailers and consumers.

Darren Prescott, Current Account Product Manager at The Co-operative Bank comments: "Cash has been with us throughout history and people have strong views about what should appear on their bank notes, however, we have noticed over the last year there has been a 4.5% increase in debit card usage over cash, as we believe people feel safer carrying less cash on a day to day basis".

"One of the many benefits of a Co-operative Bank Current Account is that account holders have the opportunity to become members of The Co-operative, which means they get rewarded for spending and for every £5 they spend at a Co-operative store they get 1 point. It's a cleverer way of spending".