The main reason that shops refuse them is because they’re old-style paper notes, and relatively easy to copy, so there are lots of bogus notes around. My partner works the tills in a local supermarket, and she regularly gets kids coming in wanting to buy a few small items, offering a £50 note for something worth less than £5, probably making £30-40 profit on each transaction.
It’s very easy to see why shops refuse them, and it’s likely the new notes will have similar features to the recent plastic £5 and £10 notes, to prevent copying, which should restore confidence in large denomination currency. I think the £20 note is next for updating, the only real issue with the new plastic notes is having to fold them to fit into a wallet, they stay permanently creased, which causes problems with machines that take notes for parking payments
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