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We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, b
by nayuki 11mo ago
We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. The vast majority of retailers would round cash transactions to the nearest $0.05, but a few would round down to the nearest $0.05 in favor of the customer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination_coins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_low-denomination...
Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: No penny, durable polymer banknotes (instead of dirty wrinkly cotton paper), colorful banknotes (instead of all green) that are easy to distinguish, $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills).
- simonw 11mo agoThe linked article raises a few problems that the US could have with that solution: > Four states - Delaware, Connecticut, Michigan and Oregon - as well as numerous cities, including New York, Philadelphia, Miami and Washington, DC, require merchants to provide exact change.
- delecti 11mo agoIf the US properly got rid of pennies (instead of Trump just doing another end-run around congress, by ordering the Mint to stop making them, on shaky legal ground), the legislation could easily supersede those state laws.
- taylodl 11mo ago[flagged]
- throwawaymaths 11mo agoWhat exactly is the law? Can you show me the statute requiring the treasury department to coin pennies?
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- delecti 11mo agoArticle 1, Section 8 of the constitution gives Congress the authority responsibility to coin money. And in the coinage act of 1792, 31 USC 5111(a)(1), congress directs that the treasury "shall mint and issue coins described in section 5112 of this title in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States", with the list in section 5112 explicitly listing the penny (31 USC 5112(a)(6)). It's clearly intended to instruct the treasury to mint pennies without congress needing to proscribe the varying amount every year. It also clearly demonstrates the intent that pennies "shall" be produced. https://spectrumlocalnews.com/mo/st-louis/politics/2025/04/30/common-cents-act--aims-to-stop-u-s--from-minting-pennies https://spectrumlocalnews.com/mo/st-louis/politics/2025/04/3... https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5111 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5111 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5112 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5112 The fact that all of that gives leeway for "'none' is all that's necessary" is why I said the legal basis was "shaky" and not "baseless". I think getting rid of pennies is good, but this is something that Congress needs to do, rather than continually abdicating its responsibilities.
- throwawaymaths 11mo agoExactly. I believe the treasury will continue minting commemorative pennies, which would even not make it "none" and give a stronger argument that "well yeah we are meeting the [numismatic] needs"
- mjd 11mo agoI think this is wrong. As far as I can tell the relevant statute is 31 USC §5112, and it does not require the minting of all authorized coins: “(a) The Secretary of the Treasury *may mint* and issue only the following coins: ... (6) ... a one-cent coin that is 0.75 inch in diameter and weighs 3.11 grams.” (Emphasis mine) There may be another clause somewhere that requires the Treasury to issue all coins, but that seems unlikely to me. The _number_ of coins to issue of each type is left to the discretion of the Treasury; why wouldn't that include the option to issue none? https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5112 https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5112
- delecti 11mo agoI addressed in another reply that "'none' is all that's necessary" is probably a defensible interpretation of the law (the more relevant portion being in 5111 rather than 5112), but the penny being explicitly listed makes it clearly not the intention of congress. That's why I said it's a "shaky" and not "baseless" legal ground. The law is clearly written with the expectation that there will be some, which is why Congress felt the need to pass the Coinage Act of 1857 to phase out the half cent. I think we should get rid of the penny, but it's Congress's responsibility to do that, and they haven't. I'm opposed to Congress abdicating its power and responsibility like that.
- mjd 11mo agoYou're right, 5111 is more pertinent here. 5111(a)(1) says “shall mint and issue coins” but qualifies it explicitly with “in amounts the Secretary decides are necessary to meet the needs of the United States”. This is a clear delegation of authority. If you don't think zero pennies is a permissible amount, what about one penny? Two? What minimum number are you arguing for here, and what's your justification for it? If Congress had wanted to set a minimum number, they could have done so. Reading it as ”shall mint” is wrong, I think. “Shall” qualifies the whole clause “mint in amounts the Secretary decides (etc.)”. Understood that way, 5111 makes it unlawful to mint any pennies if the Secretary decides that none are necessary.
- 11mo ago
- ianferrel 11mo agoThis seems like a non-issue as long as they round the price down. Because there's no law that the store can't discount their total by a small amount and then provide exact change. "Congratulations customer, we have a special coupon today for $0.03 off your purchase. Here's your change :)"
- MostlyStable 11mo agoI don't see why you couldn't do it in either case. If you modify the actual price, then you are giving exact change. Why wouldn't round() be as valid a price modification as floor()?
- simonw 11mo agoMaybe sales tax makes that harder? I guess you could calculate all of your prices such that, once sales tax is added, they round to a 5 cent value.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoYou don't need to do that. Compute the total sale, then figure the tax, then round. You don't need to round per item.
- ianferrel 11mo agoPresumably "increase the price a small amount to avoid giving exact change" is exactly the sort of thing that laws requiring giving exact change were designed to prevent. There will surely be some customer pissed about the extra 2 cents they were charged who will raise hell over the exact change law. But what customer is going to be upset over a small discount?
- simonw 11mo ago> In addition, the law covering the federal food assistance program known as SNAP requires that recipients not be charged more than other customers. Since SNAP recipients use a debit card that’s charged the precise amount, if merchants round down prices for cash purchases, they could be opening themselves to legal problems and fines, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for NACS.
- skylurk 11mo ago> require merchants to provide exact change All the items in my dad's farm shop were priced so they came out to a round dollar amount after tax, and that was 40 years ago.
- tempodox 11mo agoBut less decent people can’t resist the dark pattern of using $x.99 prices everywhere.
- mulmen 11mo agoAt big retailers the price tag code indicates what type of price it is. For example the last digits can mean: 0: full 9: sale 8: reduced 7: clearance (item will not restock) I forget the exact system Sears used but we could tell at a glance if a deal was really “good”. I’m curious if Sears and WalMart used different systems and if WalMart exploited knowledge of the Sears system to signal better prices to shoppers. Like a full WalMart price being .97 and clearance being .94.
- redwall_hp 11mo agoThat sounds close to the Sears system to me, but they used the tens place. 8x was used for returned big ticket items, like appliances and treadmills. It would start at 88 and the rightmost digit would decrement to indicate how many weeks it had been sitting there. It was 00 for full, 99 for sale (the majority of items, except for the one week every year they established the full price for that product), 8x for clearance.
- mulmen 11mo agoAh yeah, I forget the details. It was a sophisticated system. I’m curious of the origins. Did this have bookkeeping or business reporting benefits in the pre-digital age? Even when we were using computers at the turn of the millennium it helped signal discount eligibility without having to update and synchronize inventory with promotional offers.
- criddell 11mo agoHow do they deal with sales tax? Connecticut has a 6.35% sales tax so if I buy something for $1, the total will be $1.0635.
- wasabi991011 11mo agoPaying cash, you would pay $1.05.
- criddell 11mo agoI'm referring to states that don't allow rounding. > in some states, merchants could face legal trouble for rounding up or down It seems obvious to me they are already rounding to the $1/100. Why is rounding to $1/20 a problem?
- wasabi991011 11mo agoAh I see. Yeah I agree then.
- UncleSlacky 11mo agoThey could do what every other country does, and include the sales tax in the shelf label price.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoI honestly don't know why we don't get rid of nickels and dimes as well. What can you still buy that costs less than $0.25?
- blendergeek 11mo agoBananas
- stetrain 11mo agoYes, the quarter is pretty much the smallest useful unit of US currency and even that usefulness is shrinking pretty quickly. If we would adopt a policy of including local sales tax in advertised prices, skipping to whole dollars would be pretty painless. The main reason to keep at least quarters is all of the various coin-op machines that are still in service.
- FredPret 11mo agoThe US has too many tax permutations for this to be practicable. Companies would have to make prices a bit higher to accommodate unexpected sales tax increases in some or other jurisdiction. There's a small industry that specializes in knowing what the sales tax for a particular transaction should be at the moment it goes through.
- SoftTalker 11mo agoForcing the simplification of all those taxes doesn't seem like it has a downside, to me.
- FredPret 11mo agoThat would centralize power to the larger taxing authority. Right now, there's a huge number of elected people in the US who wield real local power through these taxes and other rules that they can make. It's a headache but we live in the computer age and we can automate administrative things like tax calculation at checkout; we should be using systems to aid decentralization and democratization instead of the opposite.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 11mo agoAmerican banknotes have numbers on them to easily distinguish the different values!
- ceejayoz 11mo agoNot everyone can see. Australian notes vary in size for this reason.
- rayiner 11mo ago[flagged]
- bckr 11mo agoThat’s a terribly myopic take
- zahlman 11mo agoUnfortunate metaphor in context....
- sailingparrot 11mo agoThe unbearable pain of having to handle bills of different sizes, there is not enough empathy in this world to truly pay hommage to your suffering.
- kgermino 11mo agoIt's primarily done for security and secondarily a benefit making it easier (for everyone!) to identify denomination by feel
- hollerith 11mo agoWhat security benefit is unlocked by varying the size of the bills?
- iammattmurphy 11mo agoEven though I never use cash, I’m really not a fan of coins, so I wish we did have $1 bills.
- bigfishrunning 11mo agoWe do have $1 bills. And coins!
- iammattmurphy 11mo agoSorry I meant in Canada
- totallykvothe 11mo agoI'll agree on all but one point. The cotton/linen notes feel so much better in the hand than the candy wrapper plastic of Canadian bills. I know it's a dumb reason, but I just hate the feeling.
- SCUSKU 11mo agoPlus US dollars just have that smell to them. I wouldn't mind though if we rotated out some of the faces on the bills, e.g. Andrew Jackson
- verdverm 11mo agolet's wait a few years before rotating faces to avoid debating another blatantly illegal thing Dear Leader would propose (actually he already did but it was out of the news rather quickly)
- dmd 11mo agoYou do know who would be the first person to rotate in, don't you.
- nilamo 11mo agoIt would obviously be someone as equally legendary as Washington or Jefferson; noted American Paul Bunyan. We can even call them Big Blue Bucks.
- debatem1 11mo agoMy politics and his don't line up but I'm not against this. It would be pretty interesting to see the impact on cash usage, and faces on money are pretty archeologically useful-- at least on coins.
- bregma 11mo agoIs that what cocaine smells like?
- 11mo ago
- revicon 11mo agoThere are several US states where, by law, retailers are not allowed to give preferential treatment to credit card paying customers over cash paying ones. Which means, in those states, retailers will be required to always round transactions to the cash paying customer's benefit, where in other states the retailer is allowed to round to the nearest 5 cents. This is going to cost large retailers millions. Interestingly many of them had already put the work into updating the cash register software to allow for this due to the penny shortages during covid.
- bongodongobob 11mo agoIt doesn't cost anyone anything. They can just raise prices 3 cents or whatever.
- phantom784 11mo agoIt gets tricky because sales tax is added on top of the sticker price.
- UncleSlacky 11mo agoThen include the sales tax in the sticker price, like every other country does.
- phantom784 11mo agoUnfortunately I think this is much easier said than done. No single store is going to want to make this change, because it'll make their prices look higher than the competitors'. It'd require legislation, (and even that'd likely be state-by-state legislation). It also means a company wouldn't be able to advertise a single price for a product nationwide, since sales tax rates vary by state (and many times even within a state). Also worth noting that Canada also doesn't include sales taxes.
- revicon 11mo agoThe statistics on consumers evaluating the purchase of something that is $9.99 vs $10 is well proven. Switching to round number prices would cost retailers a whole lot more. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435996900135 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243599... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23547242_Penny_Wise_and_Pound_Foolish_The_Left-Digit_Effect_in_Price_Cognition https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23547242_Penny_Wise... https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435905000813 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S002243590...
- knorker 11mo agoUS notes also stink.
- knorker 11mo agoI don't get the downvotes. I'm not saying "stink as in I don't like it". US notes literally smell, and I've not gotten that from other currency. It's not even controversial. If you Google it you'll find that it's even a deliberate anti counterfit technology.
- noir_lord 11mo agoSame in UK but we also size each face value differently. Which helps partially sighted people and is a good visual check.
- extraduder_ire 11mo agoIt doesn't happen very often, but resizing coins when a new design is created strikes me as annoying. Last time I was in the UK I also found it funny how large the 2p coin is compared to its value.
- expedition32 11mo agoIn my country they round up if you pay in cash but they keep the cents for electronic payments. So for instance 1.69 in cash would be 1.70 but if you pay with your phone it stays at 1.69
- kpw94 11mo ago> $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills). This has its own pros/cons... One advantage of $1 bill over coin is the majority of people in US don't need a wallet with zipper to hold coins. Five $1 bills is much less bulky and much lighter than five $1 CAD or five 1€ coins
- wasabi991011 11mo agoOf course everything has its pros and cons, but not all of them are worth considering. The amount of wallets with zipper is a country is not worth considering when discussing what coins should be minted.
- jamincan 11mo agoI would contend that 5 bills are more bulky than 5 coins. The only upside of dealing with US bills when travelling in the US is that you feel like a millionaire when you pull out the massive wad of bills from your pocket.
- mynameisash 11mo ago> the transition was a non-issue I'm reminded of when Minnesota passed the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) close to 20 years ago. (Some) restauranteurs - along with the GOP - made pronouncements about how this would destroy the economy. No one would go to out to eat or for a drink again. Doom and gloom. Last I checked, there are plenty of restaurants open in the state, and things are going fine. In fact, just before the MCIAA went into effect, I had a newborn, and we went out to eat one time with him in tow. We asked for a non-smoking area but were placed immediately next to a family chain smoking. We decided to never go out to eat again until we could do so without risk of second-hand smoke. My point is that there are frequently these predictions of things being impossible or even just incredibly difficult and not worth the effort, and in the end, it's not a big deal.
- MrMorden 11mo agoPeople overestimated the importance that smokers placed on being able to smoke in public. A Japanese airline (Air Do) tried reintroducing the smoking section in the 1990s. It did not go well for them, and Japan's tobacco use rate was several times the US's.
- dragonwriter 11mo ago> I'm reminded of when Minnesota passed the Minnesota Clean Indoor Air Act (MCIAA) close to 20 years ago. (Some) restauranteurs - along with the GOP - made pronouncements about how this would destroy the economy. No one would go to out to eat or for a drink again. Doom and gloom. Yeah, they had done the same thing when California did the same thing 30 years ago. The fact that it didn't happen then didn't stop them from doing it everywhere else similar laws were subsequently proposed.
- Projectiboga 11mo agoThe US has been moving to colored denominations for awhile now.
- spiderice 11mo agoBetter is very subjective here. I hate the colorful, plastic, canadian money. It feels toyish, like monopoly money. Whereas USD feels much more nice to deal with.
- chawco 11mo agoAs a Canadian with kids who recently bought Monopoly, I can you tell you that American money objectively feels much more like Monopoly money...
- shrubble 11mo agoCanadian Tire Company should be the ones designing the bills, however…
- rz2k 11mo agoI am suspicious of any claims about relative cleanliness. As with wooden vs plastic cutting boards, our intuitions are likely misleading. To be an effective fomite the currency has to not kill the microbe, and it has to readily give up the microbe to the next recipient. Organic materials like cotton or linen seem more likely to simply absorb a viral envelope or bacterial cell wall, thereby rendering it ineffective. Furthermore, the porous nature makes it more difficult for the note to give up any microbe that isn't immediately killed before it naturally dies over time. A brief search of the scientific literature doesn't seem to show any conclusive results, but it does seem like the relative performance is pathogen specific.
- pjdemers 11mo agoPaying by card doesn't round, the amount charged is exact cents, or at least that's the way it worked last time I was in Canada.
- codyb 11mo agoAll green notes are barely there anymore... the dollar bill itself. Even the five has some color now.
- munificent 11mo ago> We eliminated pennies in Canada in 2012 and the transition was a non-issue. That's because Canada had a plan, thought it through, and rolled it out. In the US... “We had a social media post (by Trump) during Super Bowl Sunday, but no real plan for what retailers would have to do,” he said, referring to the president’s February announcement. We have a deranged old man posting random shit on social media determining federal policy, so of course it's a chaotic shitshow. We elected a clown, we got a circus.
- MrMorden 11mo agoUnlike serving as a Republican politician, clowning requires a lot of work and training. It's nothing resembling an unskilled job. Ringling Bros. would do a lot better.
- kccqzy 11mo agoI simply don’t like coins because they are heavy. I will continue to prefer $1 bills over $1 coins. Agree with the rest of your points though.
- wrs 11mo agoThat's because in Canada you actually prepared for the transition, instead of just proclaiming it in a tweet.
- PeaceTed 11mo agoVery similar to the Australian system. We eliminated the 1 and 2 cent coins in 1992 without issue. Also has the polymer based colouful bank notes. Far easier to tell what you are handing over. Also given us some good names. $5 (Pink) = Prawn/Piglet $10 (Blue) = Bluey $20 (Red) = Lobster/Red back $50 (Yellow) = Pineapple/Banana $100 (Green) = Avacado So you get sentences like "They needed cash so I threw a pineapple at them".
- nayuki 11mo ago> Very similar to the Australian system Yes, and in fact: > Once the design and substrate were chosen, the Bank of Canada negotiated a contract with Note Printing Australia (NPA) for the supply of the substrate polymer and the security features implemented in the design. The substrate is supplied to NPA by Securency International (now known as Innovia Films Ltd). The Bank also negotiated for the rights to the use of intellectual property associated with the material and security features owned by the Reserve Bank of Australia. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_(banknotes) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_(banknotes) And the material is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene#Biaxially_oriented_polypropylene_(BOPP) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polypropylene#Biaxially_orient...
- fastball 11mo agoHaving $1 bills is so much nicer than having $1 coins. I don't want more coins, thanks.
- linsomniac 11mo ago>Canadian cash is better than American cash in several ways: [...] $1 and $2 coins in wide circulation (instead of worn-out $1 bills). I especially liked that the $2 coin breaks into 2 $1 coins if you drop it right. ;-) (j/k, IIRC that was an early manufacturing defect)
- bytesandbits 11mo agoI mean. I can't remember last time I used cash. Not in the last 5 years that is for sure. Once I paid someone with Venmo as that was the only way they could take it. Other than that time, I don't remember using cash at all. In SF the two only moments I can recall needing cash for is either some old self-service laundromats or funnily, chinatown where most of it is still cash. In fact recently a bunch of locations I go to often have become cashless. So you wouldn't be able to pay cash even if you wanted to. Business that are cash only do it for one reason, and one reason only, and we all know what that reason is. Slowly but steadily the volume of retail consumer cashflow is turning to digital. Cash is not going away today. Many seniors don't want / know how to use digital payments. Trends show we are moving toward all-digital. Probably 10 years from now +95% of retail will be cash-less.
- biztos 11mo agoAre they different sizes so the blind can easily use them?
- dreamcompiler 11mo agoUS $1 coins are available at banks but most Americans don't know they exist and if you hand one to a service person as a tip they sneer at you as though you handed them a quarter or foreign money.
- mbonnet 11mo agoCanadian banknotes being different physical dimensions from each other makes them distinguishable to the visually impaired too.
- golvok 11mo agoYou may be thinking of Euro notes, but the Canadian ones do have a braille code on them.