Let's speculate on future SC behaviour

[bhskittykatt]

In my little border town, we usually don't fret about Canadian pennies ending up in our change. Hell, when I get rolls of pennies from the bank, there's usually a couple in there. Pennies are pennies.

But now that I know they're getting rid of their pennies, I think I'll start collecting. Hubby likes collecting coins. So I'll accept them and buy them out of the till at the end of my shift.

As for SC behavior, I'm just glad I'm not working up there during the transition...heh.

[Rapscallion]

the ideal solution would be to have retailers set prices so that everything works out exactly to a multiple of .05 after taxes, then there would be no need for rounding.

Items sold by volume or weight sort of scupper an otherwise perfect idea.

Rapscallion

[Pixilated]

Actually, in retrospect, I'm wondering if it's going to turn out to be such a huge deal after all ... how many people carry cash anymore? Most people pay via plastic, debit or credit, even for a pack of chewing gum. If the total of my purchases is $21.76, is it going to even matter if I'm using a debit or credit card?

[Jetfire]

Nope, if you use a non-cash payment option (including checks for the 2 places in the country that still accept checks), you pay the exact amount.

If you pay by cash, then your final total is rounded to the nearest 5. (3,4,5,6,7 all go to 5, 8,9,0,1,2 go to the nearest 0). Of course the transition will probably be filled with SC's saying they're being ripped off whenever it is rounded up, even though it's at most a couple cents and it's offset by the rounding down they probably aren't complaining about.

[Chromatix]

Sounds like they're modelling it on what already happens in Finland and a few other countries. This is known as "Swedish rounding" which was pioneered, IIRC, when Sweden made the smallest coin 50 öre (half a kroner). Finland doesn't use anything smaller than €0.05 coins, even though 1- and 2-cent coins are in circulation elsewhere.

As JetFire says, non-cash payments still apply to the nearest (euro) cent, but cash is rounded to the nearest 5 cents. Because 5 is odd, the rounding is completely unambiguous. It confused me briefly the first time I encountered it, but it was easily explained.

It works pretty well in practice. Although it is theoretically possible to get ahead slightly by choosing your payment method to best advantage, people simply don't bother. Amusingly, if I use my cooperative-society debit card to pay for shopping at the cooperative society's own stores, I get a small discount (paid in arrears) over and above the normal loyalty card benefits which are available when paying with cash, so it doesn't even theoretically make sense to pay cash for 2 cents advantage except on very low-value transactions anyway.