Originally Posted by GUWonder

The last of the central banks in the Eurozone stopped printing the 500 euro notes in perhaps 2014, but the 500 euro notes are still circulating and valid for payments. In 2014, they printed over 8 million of the 500 euro notes. They stopped printing them because it was such a big store of value that people -- criminals and otherwise -- were taking them out of routine use and using them nearly exclusively as a store of value since interest rates on current account deposits weren't encouraging their deposit back at banks. Also, the OECD/FATF didn't like that the value was so high that transport of smuggled cash across borders was harder to stop than usual.