A sign posted near the self-checkout area of a Kroger store in Hilliard, Ohio, on Oct. 17, 2025, informs customers that the store has run short of pennies.

The penny’s days are numbered, and some retailers are already running short of the one-cent coins.

The Treasury Department officially marked the beginning of the end of penny production in May when it placed its last order of blanks – the flat metal discs to make pennies. That came after President Donald Trump told the department in February to stop making the coins, which cost more than 3 cents to produce (they cost 3.69 cents to make, according to the U.S. Mint).

The U.S. Mint reportedly made its last pennies in August, the American Bankers Association said on Oct. 17. Already, some convenience stores, supermarkets and retailers including Kroger and Home Depot, have had locations dealing with penny shortages.

Without enough pennies, stores cannot make correct change for cash transactions. “It hit a lot sooner than anybody thought,” said Dave Niemi, spokesman for Kwik Trip, which has about 850 convenience stores across the Midwest. The company is having trouble getting pennies, he told USA TODAY.

“This doesn’t affect all of our stores,” Niemi said. “But where the stores are short pennies, they just say, ‘OK, we’re going to round down to the nearest nickel. So we’re losing on that, but it’s in the best interest of the guests.”

Kroger, Home Depot also hit with penny shortage

Customers at some Kroger locations in central Ohio may see paper signs encouraging shoppers to use exact change when paying with cash because they are running short of pennies.

“We continue to assess the impact of the U.S. Treasury’s decision to end penny production,” a Kroger spokesperson said in an email statement to The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA TODAY Network. “If using cash for payment, we kindly ask customers to consider providing exact change.”

Home Depot spokesperson Beth Marlowe said the situation “is really an industry-wide issue,” in an email exchange with USA TODAY, and referred this reporter to the Retail Industry Leaders Association.

That organization and several others, including the National Retail Federation, the National Restaurant Association, National Grocers Association and National Association of Convenience Stores, have sent a letter to the chairpersons of the congressional financial services and banking committees asking them to pass “a national law allowing businesses to round cash transactions to the nearest nickel.”

A federal law is needed, the groups say, because at least 10 states (and some localities) have laws prohibiting rounding transactions to the nearest nickel. “Retailers are growing concerned that the penny shortage will adversely impact operations as we enter the busiest stretch of the shopping season,” said Austen Jensen, RILA’s senior executive vice president for government affairs, in an Oct. 14 news release.

SNAP and check cashing a possible problem without pennies

A new law should include language to fix other repercussions businesses may face from being unable to provide exact change “because they cannot get pennies,” groups say in their letter to Congress:

  • SNAP snags: The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which provides benefits for low-income individuals and families to buy groceries at authorized retailers, including supermarkets and convenience stores, already faces a potential funding shortfall due to the government shutdown. Penny shortages could hinder stores that serve SNAP shoppers because the benefit program prohibits rounding food prices up or down, as SNAP customers cannot be treated “less favorably or more favorably than other customers,” the group says. The groups also sent a letter to Brooke Rollins, secretary of the Agriculture Department, which administers the SNAP program, seeking “immediate legal guidance from USDA to specifically stipulate that SNAP authorized retail food stores are not in violation of the SNAP equal treatment provisions if the store rounds cash transactions to the nearest nickel.”
  • Check cashing concerns: Many retailers cash customers’ paychecks. “These services are particularly important for customers without bank accounts – of which there are millions,” the groups told Congress. “Unless these services are covered by legislation, many low-income customers may lose access to the services they need and have come to expect.”

Why are there penny shortages?

It’s not necessarily a shortage, as there are about 250 billion pennies in circulation, however, there have been “localized supply issues,” according to the American Banking Association.

That’s because about one-third of the about 165 Federal Reserve coin terminal facilities – where coins are distributed and deposited – have stopped penny transactions, the ABA said. The “supply issues” are likely to occur in parts of the country where those terminals have stopped circulating pennies.

This creates “critical choke points in the coin distribution system around the country,” said Bill Maurer, dean of the School of Social Sciences at the University of California, Irvine, and director of UCI’s Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion.

“By ceasing deposit acceptance at coin terminals, the Fed is gumming up the whole distribution system for pennies, resulting in regional shortages and pushing banks to deposit pennies further away, which will accelerate their removal from parts of the country,” Maurer told USA TODAY.

The “chaotic implementation of the discontinuation of the penny” is hurting “mostly low-income Americans and the businesses they support” with rural banks and citizens those most likely affected,” he said.

“It’s playing out way worse than expected, and we’re seeing these penny shortages roll out across the country,” Maurer said. “This is a case of charging ahead to make a change to the payments infrastructures supporting our economy and livelihoods without careful forethought into how it would all play out, and the legal and operational considerations that should have been dealt with ahead of time.”

Contributing: Emma Wozniak, The Columbus Dispatch

Mike Snider is a national trending news reporter for USA TODAY. You can follow him on Threads, Bluesky, X and email him at mikegsnider & @mikegsnider.bsky.social & @mikesnider & msnider@usatoday.com

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Got exact change? Penny shortages already hitting some retailers

Reporting by Mike Snider, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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