The EU still has 1/2cent coins (although I think Belgium no longer allows shops to give them as change).
Pennies are gone in AU/NZ and other south pacific countries.
Pennies are gone in AU/NZ and other south pacific countries.
A penny is so worthless these days even homeless people throw them out.
Visiting the US is like visiting a time machine where pennies and dollar bills still exist, where chip and pin is only just coming into fashion, and where "checks" are still used for ordinary transactions like buying groceries.
I've been wondering if there are statistics regarding the usage of checks. When I was younger almost every week I'd get stuck in line by someone very, very slowly writing a check. But I haven't seen someone write one in...well it must be at least 3 or 4 years ago and that was at some tiny store that didn't accept credit cards.
Do people really still write checks in a number that's in any way significant?
Fair enough I was mostly referring to using them at retail locations like I thought parent was alluding to. I forgot I also pay more service folks with a check (though with things like stripe I see more and more service folks using those to prevent bounced checks).
They aren't any slower than a card nowadays, with check printers. You don't even have to sign them.
Almost nowhere we shop has NFC readers yet. They're gaining adoption, but they're far from ubiquitous.
Those that do often require that you sign a receipt in addition to presenting your device or card. I've had one place go as far as to require a PIN and a signature... on a purchase where I had to unlock my phone with a fingerprint.
Compare that to "hand the clerk a paper check, clerk inserts it into the register, then hands it back to you".
> Never bounces
Sure they can. They can also be reversed, in some cases weeks after the purchase. Large retailers who print/scan checks (e.g., WalMart) present it to the bank electronically, instantly. There's actually a significantly stronger guarantee that the money is actually there in that case.
> Never gets stolen and used to make fraudulent withdrawals, at least so long as skimmers are mostly mag-stripe readers.
This is a risk, sure - but it's on the retailers, not the consumer. It's a hassle for a consumer but most banks will happily reverse the charges for you if you report a checkbook stolen.
It's just cash that gets rounded. This means there is no reason for shops to adjust their pricing for rounding (basically impossible anyway as GST/HST/PST tax is added later) since only a minority pay with cash. It's a good way to avoid any side effects of getting rid of the small coins.
But I think it was the media's policy of always showing both sides of an issue that made it seem much more contentious than it really was.
I was confused there for a second because "1/2cent coins" looks like "half-cent coins", where you actually mean "one-cent and two-cent coins".
And yeah, I would like to see these go. I refer to them simply as "Buntmetall" (a German word that translates literally as "colored metal"; appropriate since the small coins are brown-ish) and throw them away at any occasion.
There's a particular coin in the US that doesn't actually say the value on it anywhere - it's particularly annoying.