Dear MEL Topic Readers,
So what happens to America’s 114 billion pennies once the US stops
making them?
A penny is the smallest
denomination coin in the US, worth 0.01 or a cent of a dollar. The penny was
one of the first coins made by the US Mint, a bureau of the Department of the
Treasury responsible for producing coinage, that entered circulation in 1793. A
modern US penny is made of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper, and the cost of
producing a penny is now 3.69 cents per coin. Thus, the US Treasury Department
has decided to stop producing pennies next year. While existing pennies will
retain their value for transactions indefinitely, those in circulation will
decrease gradually. So, what’ll happen if you try to pay your bill in cash? In Canada,
the distribution of pennies ceased in 2013. Retailers were then no longer
expected to return pennies as change for cash purchases, and they started to
round purchases to the nearest five cents, even though goods are still priced
in one-cent increments. For example, totals ending in 1 or 2 round down to 0,
totals ending in 3, 4, 6, or 7 round to 5, and totals ending in 8 or 9 round up
to 10. Non-cash transactions like credit cards or mobile payments will not be
affected and will be paid to the exact cent. After all, it is a matter of cash transactions,
not a re-denomination of the currency.
Read the article and
learn what will happen when pennies are no longer produced in the USA.
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/05/25/business/penny-what-happens-to-them
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