re: arbitrage games with metered things like gasoline, we got rid of pennies in Canada a decade ago so I can tell you how it affected getting gas. Initially, so

re: arbitrage games with metered things like gasoline, we got rid of pennies in Canada a decade ago so I can tell you how it affected getting gas. Initially, some people switched games from the classic "try to get a whole number of dollars exactly" to "try to get two cents above a whole number of dollars", as that gets rounded down when you pay cash. However, that was also around the time that paying with cards for everything became the norm, so it stopped mattering because credit/debit card transactions don't get rounded. Worth noting, in response to the sibling comment, that if you buy $20.02 of gas for $20, you get a 0.1% discount, which I doubt throws off the owners' books. This would be 0.2% max if the nickel was also eliminated. There were also jokes about buying one grape at a time so the whole bag got rounded to 0, but I worked at a grocery store for two years and never saw anyone try to exploit the rounding, even to a lesser extent :)