Bidding Farewell to the Penny – Square Enables Cash Rounding in the U.S.

A few weeks ago, the U.S. Treasury announced it had minted the last penny. Even before this official proclamation, penny shortages and uncertainty were creating headaches for businesses, and we had already started hearing from sellers that they needed a solution for instances when they could no longer make exact change.

Square has always been about empowering sellers to accept any form of payment – and while nowadays that includes Bitcoin payments in addition to credit cards and digital wallets, it also includes traditional cash payments as well. In fact, 19% of Square transactions in the U.S. are made with cash, with food & beverage sellers seeing the highest volume of cash transactions. In a given week, at least 16.7 million pennies cross the counters of local businesses using Square in the U.S.

To help sellers get ahead of the transition away from the penny, and ensure a smooth holiday shopping season, Square is now piloting cash rounding functionality with sellers in the U.S. We already offered this functionality in Australia and Canada, which haven’t had pennies in circulation since 1992 and 2013, respectively – our experience with this dynamic is why we were able to roll out a solution so quickly.

Here’s how our technology works behind the scenes to keep the experience smooth for sellers, employees, and customers alike:

• Cash transactions will be automatically rounded to the nearest 5¢.
• As we’ve always done, Square enables back-end transaction reporting to assist sellers with reporting the total dollar amount of tax collected.

“Removing the penny may seem small, but the impact on day-to-day operations is very real,” said Willem Ave, Global Head of Product at Square. “Large chains have teams who can model scenarios and adjust quickly. There are millions of neighborhood businesses who also have a critical need to maintain smooth operations. They deserve the same level of support, and our job is to make sure they can keep serving their customers without missing a beat.”

For more information on Square, please visit squareup.com.