The U.S. Mint stopped making pennies in 2025, but legislation passed by the Senate and headed to President Donald Trump’s desk will formally end their production after 234 years.
The bill, passed by voice vote late Monday, directs the government to not make pennies, giving a legal stamp of approval to the Trump administration’s decision to stop producing the currency last year. The penny, among the first coins to be made after the Mint was established in 1792, has become increasingly expensive to produce and is used by fewer and fewer consumers as digital transactions have become more standard.
Trump is expected to sign the bill. He wrote in a social media post last year that the U.S. has produced the 1-cent coin for “far too long.”
Ending the penny will save millions of dollars
The Mint says that production of a penny now costs almost 4 cents and that ceasing to make them would generate immediate savings of $56 million annually.
The bipartisan bill, called The Common Cents Act, was sponsored by Reps. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., and Robert Garcia, D-Calif.
“When it comes to taking on waste and making sure our tax dollars are spent wisely, it’s common sense that we should stop making a coin that costs nearly four times more than it’s worth to produce,” Garcia said.
Consumers can still use their pennies
Pennies are still in circulation, and the formal end to their production doesn’t mean consumers or stores can’t use them. The Mint said it made 3.2 billion pennies in 2024.
The bill outlines new procedures for stores as pennies are phased out, and it allows them to round transactions up or down to the nearest 5 cents.
Stores around here have already been putting up “penny shortage” signs so they have an excuse to charge extra. A penny isn’t much, but they know that it adds up quickly.
Fred Myer (my workplace) just rounds up in your favor. IE if you buy something that’s $0.99 you’ll get back 0.05. Most people don’t even use cash, and those that do a maximum of 4¢ “loss” per transaction is irrelevant
which, i think, is the way that they had to do it if they were going to round at all… because there was no legislation saying that a merchant could legally give less change back than what was due for the transaction.
They probably loose similar amounts to credit card proceasing fees anyways.
More than that, I’m sure. Even if a retail establishment is absolutely massive, they’re still probably eating 9 or 10 cents per transaction just on the swipe fee. My company (day job, not the other one) does an absurd amount of credit card business by the metric of comparison to my own feeble bank account, but our transaction fee is still around 15 cents, I think, plus about 1.5%.
Swipe fees are the main reason why your local bodega has a credit card minimum of $8 or whatever. That, plus the fact that most processors will charge the merchant the swipe fee even for transactions that were declined. If all you buy is a pack of gum and charge it, they could literally come out negative on the sale by a few cents.
For my dinkum personal operation, Visa/MasterCard/etc. charge me 20 cents per transaction and just to be extra special Amex charges 25 cents. Either of the above plus 3.75%, and my gateway charges another 10 cents on top of that because fuck me for being a small time businessperson, I guess.
Yup. Recently had a plumber guy over who only took cash or checks cause the processing fees were 5% or something around there
Good times, glad my local store is being nicer
Places started doing that the day the EO was signed lol. By far the most common way places handle it is just rounding to the nearest 5¢. If the total is $x.x1 or $x.x2 it gets rounded down. If it’s $x.x3 or $x.x4 it’s rounded up.
Not really, no.