Have any spare change?

Do you still use cash and coins?

The US Treasury Department and US Mint announced that it will stop making pennies after it runs out of the blank templates used to make the coins, saving the government $56 million a year in materials costs. There is no indication that pennies will be taken out of circulation, only that new pennies will not be produced.

This move should have no impact on electronic purchases - ACH, Wire, Debit, Credit, etc.

A few news articles on the subject:

• https://www.axios.com/2025/05/22/penny-coins-end-production-2026
• https://www.axios.com/2025/05/24/treasury-penny-production-trump-shopping-change

This issue is not unique to the United States. Canada, Australia and New Zealand stopped producing their penny-equivalents years ago.

The cost to produce $0.01 is now approximately $0.0369 per penny, causing a loss to the US Mint of approximately $85.3 million. And our other coins are similarly expensive to produce:

• $0.05 nickel costs $0.1378 per coin
• $0.10 dime costs $0.0576 per coin
• $0.25 quarter costs $0.1468 per coin

It may be time to start using all those pennies we're currently saving in jars and piggybanks.

What do you think? How will stopping the production of the penny impact you?

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