Without pennies from heaven, retailers ready to change your change

Retailers may soon be able to round cash to the nearest nickel under a bill passed by state lawmakers.

The proposal, Senate Bill 1074, would allow businesses to round cash transactions up or down to the nearest five cents to avoid requiring pennies without violating the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act. This follows a 2025 decision by the U.S. government to stop making pennies due to high production costs.

Though it isn’t uncommon, said Florida Retail Federation Vice President and General Counsel Lorena Holley, retailers quickly felt the effects.

“This is not an unheard-of concept; several other countries have done the same thing – have kind of done away with their smaller coins for that very reason,” Ms. Holley said. “So what was unusual about this was it just happened all very quickly … and so almost immediately, retailers kind of started seeing a shortage of pennies, because generally, the way they receive their money and tender from the banks, they put in orders, and there were already shortages of those. And so immediately, questions kind of started to arise in terms of, ‘What do we do when we have a penny shortage?’”

“And so the Florida Retail Federation – we were immediately contacted by a number of retailers just kind of being concerned about that, and also wanting to be upfront with their customers, so that kind of led to a lot of research, and ended up having legislation filed this year … that really kind of lays out the process of how to round, and also to confirm that it only applies to cash transactions, and also to confirm that the sales tax is applied to the sales, to the actual sale of the of the item, not the rounded amount,” she continued.

“And so what we’ve done is really provide our retailers with a lot of clarity, which they didn’t have before, and comfort, because in addition in the legislation, it confirms that rounding is not a violation of Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, which is a law that essentially allows a consumer to allege that a retailer, in this instance, charges them a different price than what the sales price was because they had to round up or round down. The legislation also allows the retailer to decide whether they round in favor of the customer or in favor of themselves, or they just do it depending on the sales price of the sale of the item and in like the one, two or three, that kind of thing.”

Ms. Holley added that the legislation, which the federation expects to be signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, helped shed light on the issue and comfort both retailers and consumers. She also said certain retailers, such as convenience and grocery stores, receive more cash payments than others.

“I think customers definitely care because, in this economy, every penny counts … and maybe it’s caused people to pay now less with cash, but I think people that pay with cash will always pay with cash,” she said.

“But I think knowing now that the pennies are – there’s a shortage – consumers are more careful about having exact change, or they’re just going to accept that it’s going to be rounded to the nickel or to the dime, depending on the amount. So again, I think it’s just one of just awareness that that brings a lot more comfort to consumers.”

Ms. Holley expects pennies to gradually phase out. In the meantime, retailers and consumers will have clarity on how to address the issue.

“The penny is still legal tender and will remain to be so, but I think eventually we’ll probably no longer have the penny,” she said. “In years, I think the result will be [that] people will just no longer use pennies, and they’ll just use nickels and dimes. So I think the result is now a lot of consumers are aware of this issue, where they weren’t before all this legislation.”

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