A bundle on the pavement usually sits near a problem. A runner was shoved, or an arrest scattered a bag. The cash is real, but so are the rival and police positions that put it there. Read those positions before treating the bundle as a free reward.
Games about contested treasure make a distinction between possession and completion. Sea of Thieves describes cashing in as a separate step from collecting treasure. BLACKOUT has the same useful distinction at a smaller scale: a grabbed bundle goes into your bag. You still need to bank it.
How bundles appear
In the current alpha, a successful shove spills a $2K bundle when the target is carrying enough cash. An arrest scatters the runner's unbanked bag into bundles. That means a small pile and a large scatter tell different stories. One may mark a passing interruption; the other may mark an officer's successful arrest.
Loose cash also expires. A shove's bundle currently lasts eight seconds, while arrest-scattered bundles last longer. The limited lifetime is a reason to make a quick decision, not a reason to abandon judgment. If getting there requires a dangerous crossing, you can let it disappear.
Grabbing is an interaction
Move close, stop and use the context action when the prompt says Grab. Running across the general area while mashing the button is less reliable than arriving at a particular bundle and confirming what the prompt offers.
Nearby objects matter because the context button also handles boxes, pickups and banking. Look at the label. A character standing near several interactive things can be close to the wrong one for the action you intended.
The detour has a price
Try this worked decision. You have $16K in your bag, your car is ahead and a $2K bundle lies behind a rival. Collecting it would increase the bag by a modest amount while moving you away from the deposit. If the rival is turning back, leaving the bundle is a perfectly sensible play.
Change the scene: your bag is empty, the bundle lies directly along the route to the next job and the rival is already running away. Now the same $2K can be a convenient pickup. The amount hasn't changed. Your exposure, direction and competition have.
This is why a fixed rule such as “always take loose cash” fails. It ignores the rest of the run. A bundle is worth the time and risk of its particular location, not just the number printed on it.
Don't stand over the spill
If you caused the spill, the temptation is to stop immediately and collect your reward. But your target can recover, another runner can intervene and the shove has made noise. First decide whether the space you created is more valuable as an escape.
If you were the runner who dropped it, avoid turning a small loss into a larger one. Chasing your own $2K back through the officer who nearly caught you can cost the rest of your bag. The fact that it used to be yours doesn't improve the route.
Check the next job before the second bundle
A scattered bag invites a series of tiny extensions: this one, then that one, then the one beside the wall. Individually they look cheap. Together they can keep you in a closing district.
After the first pickup, glance at the warning and choose again. If the route is no longer clean, leave. You don't have to empty a pile to make collecting part of it worthwhile.
For one learning run, take only loose cash already on your intended route. That makes it easier to see how much time deliberate detours actually cost. Once you can bank consistently, expand the rule based on what you observe. The banking decision guide applies the same reasoning to another box.