New coinage, should we scrap 1p &2p coins?

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The Royal Mint are issuing new coins, I think we should take the opportunity to slowly withdraw the 'copper' coins

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67091137

OP, it makes perfect sense to me. In Australia when you pay cash, the price is either rounded up or down to the nearest 5 cents. Australian currency no longer uses 1c and 2c coins. It costs more to mint them than the value of the coin.

Just pay on card? Then there's no coin drama!

I think these new coins are so lovely.

I don’t think a COL crisis is a time to do away with low denomination coins though. There will be families where every penny matters and rounding up (which will invariably happen) will be detrimental.

@PosteriorPosterity - In Oz they round to the nearest, so some are rounded up, some rounded down. So $1.92 becomes $1.90, $1.93 becomes $1.95. Card transactions wouldn’t change.

I can't imagine any business rounding down, all they'll do is increase the price slightly so it's always rounded up.

Then prices will rise even more.

I think it we all paid by card we'd be heading quicker for a cashless society. The repercussions of that are horrendous.

I hardly pay with cash any more but when I do get small coinage, 5p, 2p, 1p, it all goes into a pot for charity. I know lots of people do this, and I assume apart from the PITA for the charities to bank it, it must be quite valuable for them overall.

It would be inflationary (no one is going to round down the price, are they?)

But I think you've got a point about 2p pieces - we no longer need those as well as the more versatile 1p.

We could probably scrap the 20p too

I have a friend who works as a fundraiser for a charity and she's perfectly happy to deal with donations of small coins. She takes the view that it's all still money, and that someone giving the accumulated odd coins from their pockets is just as generous as a major donor

Where I live, the only coins are 1 dirham, 50 fils and 25 fils. One dirham is just over 20p. Card transactions are exact and cash transactions are rounded to the nearest 25 fils.

You can get a 1000 dirham note but it's like carrying a piece of paper worth over £220 so I hate them!

Canada works the same as Australia - rounded to the nearest 5 cent. Works fine.

I instinctively want to keep them around, even though 1p now is worth a heck of a lot less than the half pence when that was scrapped nearly 40 years ago.

I don't think they will need to mint many of the new ones though. It will be mainly for collector's sets and to replace damaged coins. There must be billions of 1p and 2p coins stuck down the back of sofas already in existence, some dating all the way back to decimalisation in 1971, and these will stay in circulation for as long as people want to use them.

No, because retailers will put the price of every single thing up to the nearest 5p, and how would it work with something like fuel anyway? Some people pay with their card, but others still pay in cash.

I'd be happy to see them go, providing rounding up was not permitted.

Most countries that have the same system don't change prices, they just go on as they always have done as the change only affects people paying with cash.

If you pay by card then you pay the exact amount of your transaction, as you currently do - if your total is £9.02 then you pay £9.02; if it's £9.44 then you pay £9.44

However, if you pay with cash then they just automatically round to the nearest 5p, sometimes you will pay a couple of pence "extra" other times it will be a couple of pence cheaper so they ultimately balance out - if your total is £9.02 then you pay £9; if your total is £9.44 then you pay £9.45.

Last time I was in Australia the supermarket in Perth had a pot of sweets by the checkout, and encouraged me to take one as "compensation" when the price had been rounded up.

I lived in Australia too, and it worked fine without them. Retailers didn't tend to change prices, they stayed the same. The rounding up/rounding down thing meant that sometimes you would pay a couple of cents more, but sometimes a couple of cents less, so it evened out.

Edited to add - I do think charities felt it though, as there was less small change floating around to put in collection boxes.