The Penny Is Ending. Congress Is Already Considering What Comes Next

The penny is gone from the production line, but the math that helped kill it has already moved one coin up the ladder. America’s nickel is worth five cents and cost the U.S. Mint 13.31 cents to produce and distribute in fiscal 2025. That leaves Congress with an uncomfortable question: What happens when the replacement for an uneconomical coin is itself uneconomical?

The U.S. Mint struck the final penny for general circulation in November 2025, closing a 232-year production run. By then, making a one-cent coin cost 3.69 cents. Production stopped, but pennies did not suddenly become worthless. Roughly 300 billion are estimated to remain in circulation, and they continue to be legal tender.

That point has become a source of public confusion. In one Reddit discussion, people wondered whether their accumulated pennies needed to be rushed to a bank before some deadline. “Spend them,” one commenter replied, noting that stopping production is different from eliminating a coin as legal tender. Another suggested pennies may eventually become like other uncommon forms of U.S. currency: perfectly valid, but increasingly strange to encounter at the register.

Your $19.83 Purchase Could Become $19.85

The bigger headache begins when nobody has a penny to give back. A store selling something for $19.83 cannot make exact change without one-cent coins, leaving retailers to decide whether to round — and potentially contend with state or local laws governing the practice.

The Common Cents Act is Congress’ attempt to give businesses a national framework. Under the proposal, retailers unable to provide exact change could round cash totals to the nearest nickel. A $19.82 cash purchase could become $19.80, while $19.83 could become $19.85. Card and electronic transactions would still be charged to the exact cent.

Versions of the bipartisan legislation have passed both chambers, including a Senate version approved by unanimous consent in August. But the House and Senate passed different measures, meaning additional congressional action is necessary before legislation can reach President Donald Trump. Business groups are pushing for clarity: the National Restaurant Association says one in four restaurant transactions are still paid in cash.

Then There’s the 13-Cent Nickel

The nickel presents an even stranger equation than the penny did. It cost 13.31 cents to produce and distribute a five-cent coin in fiscal 2025, following a cost of 13.78 cents the previous year. Nickel production costs have exceeded the coin’s face value for 20 consecutive years.

Congress is not yet preparing the nickel for extinction. The Common Cents Act instead offers a potential lifeline: make it cheaper. The Treasury could test a new composition using zinc and nickel, provided it reduces costs without causing significant problems for vending machines, coin counters and other equipment built to recognize existing coins.

There is, however, a proposal to go much further. Republican Rep. David Schweikert of Arizona introduced legislation that would suspend penny and nickel production for 10 years and require a federal study of rounding cash purchases to the nearest dime. That proposal has not advanced beyond its House referral. For now, the nickel remains legal tender, and no final decision has been made to stop producing it.

Losing the Nickel Would Change Cash More Than It Seems

A world without newly minted pennies is manageable because nickels preserve five-cent increments. Take away the nickel too, and cash becomes considerably less precise. The dime would effectively become the smallest regularly produced coin available for settling transactions, while cards could continue charging $7.92 or $14.97 without adjustment.

The seemingly tiny differences could add up. A Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond analysis cited by Newsweek estimated that eliminating the penny alone could produce roughly $6 million in annual net rounding costs for consumers. If the nickel disappeared and transactions were instead rounded to the nearest dime, that estimate could approach $56 million a year. For comparison, producing 202 million nickels generated a $17.7 million loss for the Treasury in 2024.

And the people most exposed to rounding are not necessarily the people most able to avoid it. Federal Reserve figures show older adults, rural consumers and lower-income households use cash more frequently, while FDIC data cited by Newsweek found 66.2% of unbanked households relied entirely on cash rather than prepaid cards or nonbank online payment services. Cash accounted for 14% of consumer payments in 2025, but 90% of consumers still said they intended to keep using it. Congress may be looking at a five-cent coin, but the decision waiting behind it is much larger: how inconvenient America is willing to let physical money become.