Cash payment limit checker for the UK and EU

No. Legal tender only decides which notes and coins settle a debt, and no statute caps what anyone in England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland may pay or accept in cash. So for a deal in the UK the checker shows "No legal limit for this payment". It then looks for the duty the deal may set off, namely whether the business must be registered to handle that much cash for goods.

The Bank of England's explainer on legal tender puts it plainly: a shop owner can choose what to accept. A seller may therefore turn cash down or ask for a bank transfer, and a buyer breaks no rule by offering a large sum in notes.

Take the deal the checker opens on, a used car bought from a car dealer for £12,000 and paid entirely in notes. No limit applies, and the duty row reads "Must be a registered high value dealer", because the cash reaches £10,000. Paid £9,500 in cash, the same car gives "Below the high value dealer threshold". Bought from a neighbour in a private sale, it sets off no duty at all.

UK law sets no ceiling on cash, but it does decide which businesses may take large sums of it. Under regulation 14 of the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, a firm or sole trader that trades in goods can become a high value dealer (HVD). That happens once it makes or receives at least £10,000 in cash for one transaction. Payments that appear to be linked are added together, so instalments count as one sum.

The Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing (Amendment) Regulations 2026 stated that threshold in pounds from 30 June 2026; before, it was €10,000. An HVD must be registered with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) before it takes such a payment, and it must identify the customer. The buyer commits no offence by paying cash, and services, land and buildings fall outside the rule because they are not goods.

HMRC's page on registration fees lists £300 for an application, £400 a year for each premises and £40 for each person whose approval it checks. Under regulation 56, a business may not act as an HVD until its registration is in place, although one whose application is pending may carry on meanwhile.

Registration brings duties. For an occasional cash transaction of £10,000 or more, the dealer carries out customer due diligence, identifying the customer and verifying that identity, and keeps the records for five years.

The rule runs both ways. A business that pays out that much cash for goods, such as a motor trader buying a car from a private seller, is caught as well. Cash handed to a third party, or paid into a bank account for the dealer's benefit, also counts.

Gold and other precious metals are goods like any other, so a bullion dealer or jeweller falls under the same threshold. The one UK rule that bans cash outright is narrower. In England and Wales, the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 lets a scrap metal dealer pay for scrap metal only by a non-transferable cheque or an electronic transfer. Gold, silver and alloys with a set minimum share of either are not scrap metal under the Act. Scotland has a similar rule under the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982 that takes in precious metal too.

Any amount the seller agrees to take, since no UK law caps a cash payment for a car. What changes at £10,000 is the car dealer's position. From that sum in cash, counted across a deposit and later instalments, the dealer must be registered as an HVD and identify the buyer.

A dealer that is not registered can take at most £9,999.99 in cash, so the rest of a dearer car goes by debit card, bank transfer or banker's draft.

A private sale works differently. A person selling their own car is not trading in goods, so neither side has a duty, whatever the sum. A motor trader buying a car for cash is caught the other way round, as the one making the payment.

HMRC's guidance for HVDs, AMLG2600, treats notes and coins and travellers' cheques in any currency as cash. Card payments, cheques and bank transfers do not count towards the threshold, so the checker compares only the cash part of the price with it.

Linked transactions are added together, whether a deal is split by invoice or by date. AMLG2600 gives the example of two pallets of goods at £5,000 each, invoiced separately and both paid in cash, which together reach £10,000. A car paid for in monthly cash instalments is linked in the same way once the instalments add up to the threshold.

Only cash paid for goods counts when a bill mixes goods and services. In the same guidance, a bathroom costing £17,000 splits into fixtures and fitting. With £12,000 of fixtures paid in cash the fitter is an HVD, but with £9,000 of fixtures and £8,000 of fitting it is not. Land, buildings and gift cards are not goods either.

In the checker, the whole price is everything bought together, VAT included, and the cash field holds the part paid in notes and coins. The bathroom and pallet examples are among the checked cases it reproduces.

Outside sales of goods, UK law has no cash rule for these payments, so for property, services and wages the checker shows a short note instead of a duty.

Buying a home with cash is legal, and the HVD rule never applies, because land and buildings are not goods. Each estate agent and conveyancer is under the money laundering rules in its own right, and checks who the buyer is and the source of funds. In property sales, a "cash buyer" usually means one with no mortgage, not one paying in notes. Stamp duty and the other property purchase costs come on top of the price.

Paying a builder or any other tradesperson in cash is legal, even above £10,000, since building work is a service and AMLG2600 looks only at goods. The builder declares the income for tax in the same way, whatever the form of payment.

Rent may be paid in cash in every UK nation, and no rule sets a ceiling for it. Some neighbours are stricter: Italy bans cash for home rent whatever the amount, and Spain's tenancy law asks for electronic payment unless one side has no bank account.

An employer may pay wages in cash as well, and the PAYE duties stay the same. The employee gets a payslip on or before payday, the payroll report reaches HMRC by that day, and National Minimum Wage records are kept for six years. The salary calculator works out what a gross wage leaves after tax and National Insurance.

A buyer who pays a large sum in cash commits no offence in the UK, because the duties sit with the business. HMRC can impose a civil penalty on a dealer that takes cash at or above the threshold while unregistered, or that skips its checks. Regulation 76 sets no fixed figure; HMRC charges the amount it considers appropriate.

Breaking the requirements can also be a criminal offence under regulation 86, punishable on indictment by up to two years in prison, an unlimited fine or both. Spain, France and Italy go further, since their fines can reach the payer as well as the payee.

Separately, a business in the regulated sector that knows or suspects money laundering sends a suspicious activity report to the National Crime Agency, at any amount. What sets off a report is the circumstances, not the use of cash alone.

From 10 July 2027, article 80 of Regulation (EU) 2024/1624 caps cash in every member state for anyone trading in goods or providing services. They may accept or make a cash payment of at most €10,000, with linked operations counted together. The cap binds the trader, so it reaches a UK visitor paying an EU shop, hotel or dealer, even though the UK itself is outside the regulation.

Payments between two private persons fall outside article 80, and so do payments and deposits at a bank's premises. Each member state sets the penalties, and none had published one by 21 October 2026, so the checker shows "Penalty set by national law". Lower national limits stay in force, and the European Commission reports on the cap by 10 July 2030.

Several member states already set lower national limits, each in its own way.

• Spain: under Ley 7/2012, no cash at all for an operation of €1,000 or more where a business is a party, or €10,000 for a private payer living abroad. The fine is 25% of all the cash, owed by payer and payee together.
• France: no cash for a debt above €1,000 owed to or by a professional. A payer domiciled abroad may go up to €10,000, and the fine reaches 5% of the cash at most.
• Italy: cash up to €4,999.99 between any two persons, private persons included, and a fine of €1,000 to €50,000.
• Netherlands: the Belastingdienst says a trader in goods may still take €2,999.99 in cash, and a breach costs the trader €10,000.
• Germany: no limit before the EU cap, though a dealer identifies a buyer paying €10,000 or more in cash, and property may not be paid for in cash at all.
• Poland: no limit for private buyers; between two businesses, a deal above PLN 15,000 goes wholly through a payment account.

For a UK visitor paying a dealer €12,000 in notes for a car on 21 October 2026, Italy allows €4,999.99, the Netherlands €2,999.99 and Germany any amount. Spain and France allow none of it in cash, because the whole price passes their €10,000 limit for visitors. The Polish price below is the same sum at the NBP rate of 4.3641 zloty to the euro.

France allows up to €15,000 when the seller itself has anti-money-laundering duties, until the EU cap takes over, and asks for an identity document above €1,000. Italy's tourist procedure lets buyers who are not Italian citizens and live abroad pay up to €15,000. It works only at shops and travel agencies that have told the tax agency they use it, and the EU cap brings that sum down to €10,000.

Everyday sums sit far below all of these limits, and the tipping guide covers what is customary for tips country by country.

The large figure is the most that may go in cash for the deal entered, or "No legal limit for this payment" when no rule caps it. Below it, the rows name the rule that binds and its threshold. They also say whether the law counts the whole price or only the cash part, and give the fine when the cash is over.

The counting method changes the answer. For an €8,000 car bought from a dealer by someone living in Spain, the checker gives €0.00, since the whole price passes €1,000. The fine is €2,000.00, which is 25% of all the cash. In Italy the same deal allows €4,999.99, because Italy looks at the cash alone.

The date matters too: the checker accepts payments from 1 July 2026 to 31 December 2029 and applies each rule from the day it starts. For Spain, France and Italy it asks where a private payer lives, and for Poland it asks for the euro rate, used only for limits set in euros. A bar splits the price into cash within the limit, cash over it and the part paid by card or transfer.

A table under the result repeats the deal in every country covered, with the lowest limit there, what it is counted on and the fine. The checker cannot tell whether a business would report a payment as suspicious, and it leaves out cash withdrawals, bank deposits and the cash a traveller carries across a border.