Yes, you can still use pennies in the United States, but they’re slowly being phased out of everyday use and no new ones are being made for general circulation. Existing pennies remain legal tender and can still be spent, though more shops are starting to round some cash totals to the nearest nickel.

What’s Happening With Pennies?

  • In 2025, under President Donald Trump’s second term, the Treasury halted production and distribution of pennies for general circulation, while keeping them for collectors and historical sets.
  • By late 2025, the Federal Reserve had largely stopped supplying and processing pennies at most of its terminals, which means banks and stores are gradually getting fewer fresh pennies.
  • The main driver is cost: producing and distributing each penny has been costing the government several times its face value for years.

Can You Still Spend Pennies?

  • Yes, pennies remain legal U.S. currency; only Congress can fully eliminate a coin as legal tender, and that has not happened.
  • You can still:
    • Pay with pennies at most brick‑and‑mortar stores
    • Use them to roll and deposit at many banks
    • Use exact‑change jars, charity boxes, and coin machines where accepted
  • What is changing is availability: as pennies get lost, damaged, or hoarded, they will not be replaced with newly minted ones for circulation.

How Stores Handle Prices Now

Many retailers are starting to follow models already used in countries like Canada, which stopped penny distribution in 2013 but kept the coin legal.

Typical patterns:

  • Card / digital payments
    • Still charged exactly “to the cent” on receipts and bank statements.
  • Cash payments
    • Some stores:
      • Keep using pennies while they still have them
      • Round the final total to the nearest 5 cents when they are short on pennies
    • Rounding rules often look like:
      • 0–2 cents → rounded down
      • 3–4 cents → rounded up
  • There is no single nationwide rounding law yet; approaches can differ by chain, state, city, or even individual store policy.

Example Rounding Table (Cash Only)

[7][3] [7] [7] [7] [7]
Final total shown Cash you actually pay Notes
$10.01 $10.00 Rounded down to nearest nickel.
$10.02 $10.00 Small savings for the customer.
$10.03 $10.05 Rounded up to nearest nickel.
$10.04 $10.05 Minor rounding cost to the customer.
$10.05 $10.05 No change from posted total.

What This Means for “Value”

  • Everyday value
    • A penny is still worth one cent in all normal transactions as long as it remains legal tender.
  • Collector value
    • Most modern pennies will never be worth more than face value, but older or rare mint‑error pennies can have numismatic value.
  • Long‑term trend
    • As circulation shrinks and cash rounding spreads, the penny’s practical role in day‑to‑day shopping will keep fading, even while the coin is still technically usable.

Forum Angle & “Latest News” Vibe

  • Online forums and discussion threads in 2025 are full of:
    • Nostalgia posts about “last pennies”
    • Debates over whether rounding hurts low‑income, cash‑reliant shoppers
    • Jokes about jars of pennies finally becoming “retirement funds” (experts strongly disagree)
  • Economists generally argue the rounding effect averages out and does not systematically favor stores or customers, especially if rounding rules are symmetric.

In short: you can still pull out a handful of pennies at the checkout, but the system around you is slowly preparing for a future where those little copper‑colored coins barely ever change hands.

TL;DR:

  • Yes, you can still use pennies; they remain legal tender.
  • The U.S. has stopped making new pennies for circulation, so they’ll slowly disappear from everyday change.
  • Cash totals may increasingly be rounded to the nearest nickel, but card and digital payments stay precise to the cent.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.