Ask the Slot Expert: My two cents on how eliminating pennies will affect slots

My grocery store had a sign at the entrance. It said they had a shortage of pennies. I don't remember what they wanted customers to do. The shortage wasn't going to affect me. I can't remember the last time I used cash in a supermarket.

For that matter, I can't remember the last time I used cash to pay for anything. I always pay with a credit card using Samsung Wallet or a physical credit card if there are problems paying using my phone.

Pennies are still circulating, but the supply will diminish due to attrition. How will the eventual extinction of the penny affect prices? Will prices end with 0 or 5 then instead of 9?

Let's say prices do change to end with 0 or 5. Won't state and local sales taxes create prices that don't end in 0 or 5?

What about slot machines? If there are no more pennies, can we still have penny and two-cent denominations on slots? Will nickels be the lowest denomination?

Thinking about this for a while, I realized that there is only one action that will be affected when there are no more pennies.

The only time that not having pennies requires a change in procedure is when you cash in a ticket. As long as you stay in the ticket (or casino wallet/cashless gaming) world, you can win and lose virtual pennies. When you want to get cash, though, the casino will have to round to nickels.

This procedure mirrors the Department of the Treasury's advice. Transactions that do not use cash (e.g., check, credit or debit cards, gift cards) should not be rounded. ("We recommend that non-cash transactions, such as payments made by check, credit card, or debit card, continue being priced and processed to the exact cent.") Only the final amount of a cash transaction, when cash actually changes hands, should be rounded. ("When penny change is not available, businesses may round the final amount of a cash transaction to the nearest five-cent increment....")

Las Vegas Review Journal gaming columnist Richard Velotta wrote in his column How will casinos handle the decommission of pennies? that "machines will likely be recalibrated to distribute winnings rounded to 5 or 10 cents. "

I disagree. Can you imagine the expense of having to install new software on the machines to round the amount when printing a ticket? If you want to leave existing machines as they are and depend on the machine replacement cycle to get machines that round on the slot floor, how many years will that take? And the casino will need some procedure to handle all the non-rounded tickets in the meantime.

It's much simpler and cheaper to leave machines as they are and let them issue tickets down to the penny. The ticket redemption kiosks and cashier system are the only two systems that need to do the rounding. Just as with the Treasury's advice for businesses -- leave the rounding until the last moment. Isn't it better to have to alter the software in a few kiosks and the cage system instead of in thousands of slots? If the kiosks already print tickets for coins, they don't have to be changed at all.

Casinos will round only when they have to hand you cash. All other transactions will be exact.

That's my two cents on how eliminating pennies will affect slots.

Another question I've been thinking about is this: When there are no more pennies, how can I put in my two cents?

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Send your slot and video poker questions to John Robison, Slot Expert™, at slotexpert@slotexpert.com. Because of the volume of mail I receive, I regret that I can't reply to every question.

Copyright © John Robison. Slot Expert and Ask the Slot Expert are trademarks of John Robison.