Customers given old £10 notes have been urged to ask retailers to swap them with alternative currency.

After 1 March, old paper £10 notes will cease to be legal tender as they have been replaced with the new and more robust polymer notes, featuring Jane Austen, that were introduced last year to reduce the amount of counterfeit money in circulation.

According to the Bank of England, about 200 million old Charles Darwin paper banknotes remain in circulation.

Retailers will still be able to give them out as change on Thursday, but after that they will no longer be accepted in shops.

This means that customers might get stuck with the old currency after the deadline - and will have to take them to a bank or a Post Office to be changed.