The penny may be disappearing, but that doesn’t mean every grocery price will suddenly end in a zero or five.
Instead, the change most people are likely to notice happens at the very end of a cash transaction. When pennies aren’t available to make exact change, the final amount could be rounded to the nearest nickel, and depending on your total, you could pay a couple of cents more or less.
Only the final total would be rounded
The U.S. Treasury Department’s guidance on ending penny production recommends that rounding happen only after taxes, fees, and other charges have been calculated. That means individual prices wouldn’t have to change simply because pennies are becoming harder to find.
A $10.02 purchase could become $10
Under the commonly recommended symmetrical rounding system, totals ending in 1, 2, 6, or 7 cents are rounded down to the nearest five cents. So a $10.02 cash total would become $10, while a $10.07 purchase would become $10.05.
A $10.03 purchase could become $10.05
It works in the other direction when the final total ends in 3, 4, 8, or 9 cents, with the amount rounded up to the nearest nickel. That would turn a $10.03 cash purchase into $10.05 and a $10.09 purchase into $10.10 under the Treasury’s recommended approach.
Related: 10 Wheat Pennies Worth Far More Than One Cent
Your credit card purchase wouldn’t need to be rounded
This is where the distinction between prices and cash payments becomes important, because the Treasury recommends continuing to process credit cards, debit cards, and checks to the exact cent. A purchase totaling $15.98 could therefore remain $15.98 when paid electronically even if a cash payment is rounded to $16.
You can still spend the pennies you already have
Stopping production doesn’t make the pennies sitting in your change jar worthless, and Treasury says the roughly 114 billion existing pennies can continue circulating. The Common Cents Act passed by the House would also explicitly keep existing pennies legal tender while permanently ending their production for general circulation.
Related: 17 Rare Quarters Worth Some Serious Money
Stores could still give exact change when pennies are available
Rounding becomes relevant when a business doesn’t have the pennies necessary to make exact change, rather than automatically making every cash purchase subject to rounding. The Treasury’s penny guidance says retailers should continue accepting pennies and providing penny change while the coins remain in circulation.
The House has moved to make the change permanent
The House passed the Common Cents Act on Sept. 14, legislation that would permanently end penny production for general circulation while providing national guidance for rounding cash transactions when exact change isn’t available.
The legislation still has to move through the Senate before it could go to the president for a signature, so the House vote by itself does not make those provisions federal law.
