The Green Sheet Online Edition
February 9, 2026 • 26:02:01
StreetSmarts
Small change, big shift: Life after the penny
We've all heard the news: the penny has reached its end of life. Considering that it currently costs three cents to make a one-cent penny, I guess the penny's demise was inevitable, but where do we go from here?
Viewing the penny's disappearance through the lens of the payments ecosystem makes me wonder who will feel it first and who will feel it most. Consumers: Customers do not want to pay for the lack of pennies. People are weighing in on social media about the penny's demise, advising businesses to round down rather than round out purchases.
One man on TikTok claimed he was shorted, demanding a rounded down receipt, warning the merchant that lawsuits are coming. Merchants transitioning to a penny-less world shouldn't balance transactions on their customers' backs.
Merchants: Business owners will have to place signage in their stores to explain the new pricing schemes. I've seen some go around collecting pennies and others trying to re-price inventories, which will not really work because pennies will still appear when sales tax and tips are added.
With nine states and seven cities already requiring merchants to accept cash, and more likely to join, operating as a cashless business isn't always possible. Twenty states do not allow pricing and sales tax to be bundled into a single total.
Accountants: Bookkeepers are going to be screaming, shaking their heads and pulling their hair out when they collect $17.90 for that $17.92 invoice. Is the missing two cents a loss? How can it be accounted for when doing your books and balancing a cash drawer?
POS, tech providers: POS companies will have to adjust devices to print both the real price and rounded price on receipts. POS companies with terminals that display cash prices will have to figure out what to do. I am sure that POS companies are already considering how to handle this, and most will look at regulations and compliance before investing in development.
ISOs and agents: At some point the industry will have to come up with a standard, but this may never happen. Some considerations when designing the new default are whether to round up or round down, and whether to round up per transaction or per basket. How many of these decisions will be merchant choice and how many will be regulatory mandate?
Pushback
Will we face an onslaught of real or threatened lawsuits as we try to figure things out? When businesses begin to round up, people will vent on social media. Some may even call their attorneys.
Social media narratives will run the gamut from lectures about fair play to inflation anxiety to outright nostalgia. Consumer advocates will take a stand for rounding down. Others will draw historical parallels with Canada and Australia, countries that have already retired their one-cent coins.
We'll see a fair share of emotion, resistance and misinformation, which will make these videos fun to watch. I'm sure we'll be in for a barrel of lols.
Damage control
Business owners will have to wait until the government makes a rule. It's anyone's guess how regulators will structure the new rules for managing money. These days, when I hand over cash, I am not always confident that the clerk at the register will know how to make change.
So many young people are unfamiliar with paper money; imagine their confusion when we ask them to round up to the nearest dollar. We'll need massive training and outreach to educate the public when the new currency regulations go into effect.
Canada's rule is to round to the nearest nickel, so $9.98 becomes $10.00 and $9.97 becomes $9.95. That may sound fair but it's kind of a coin toss: sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.
More than just a coin
What do we lose and what do we gain? This may seem sentimental, but I think the absence of pennies may make coin collecting less fun for children and numismatists. I also feel for the accountants, bookkeepers and CFOs who will have to crunch the numbers. And let's not forget the consumers and business owners who will have to adapt to the new normal.
The penny may be small, but its removal forces the payments industry to confront how change is introduced, explained, and trusted at the checkout.
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Allen Kopelman, a serial entrepreneur, is co-founder and CEO of Nationwide Payment Systems Inc. and host of B2B Vault: The Biz to Biz podcast. Email him at allen@npsbank.com and connect on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/allenkopelman/ and Twitter @AllenKopelman.
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