How McDonald's Plans To Handle Cash Without Pennies

Apparently we have a shortage of pennies. Or, rather, the production of pennies is going away. It actually costs more to produce a penny than the penny is worth. So, those little one cent coins are going away.

In 2024, the cost to make a single U.S. penny was 3.69 cents, which is more than its face value. This cost includes about 3 cents for raw materials and 0.69 cents for administrative costs and distribution.

So, the next time you head to McDonald's you will be paying slightly more or slightly less depending on how close on either end you are to a whole 5 cents. They will now be rounding either up or down to the nearest nickel in order to avoid having to give change in pennies.

"Following the discontinuation of pennies nationwide, some McDonald's locations may not be able to provide exact change. We have a team actively working on long-term solutions to keep things simple and fair for customers," McDonald's told ABC in a statement.

It's good to know that this policy only effects cash transactions. It will not be used on any sort of credit or debit card transactions. Those will remain the same as they were before. It only is the case if they are having to make change. If you do happen to use change for your payment, if you do have exact change that includes pennies, that will be fine too. It just has to do with them making change for you that the rounding up or down policy will be active.

Removing the penny from U.S. currency has been a bipartisan issue for many years. Before Trump directed the Treasury to stop making the penny, President Barack Obama and both chambers of Congress sought to end the production of the coin.