LogFAQs > #927133449

https://www.mint.ca/store/mint/about-the-mint/faqs---businesses-6900006

Are businesses required to accept pennies after February 4, 2013?

While businesses do not have a legal obligation to accept any particular Canadian coins or bank notes in a retail transaction, the penny will continue to be legal tender like all other Canadian coins, and businesses may accept the coin as a means of payment if they so choose.

Will businesses be able to redeem pennies with their financial institutions?

Businesses can continue to deposit pennies at their financial institutions. Some financial institutions may require large amounts of pennies to be rolled or wrapped for deposit. Businesses should consult their financial institutions in advance to determine how best to make deposits in large volumes.

Sounds to me like you shouldn't have taken what she said at face value.

zebatov posted...

Our prices round up or down to the nearest zero or five, which is actually not that great because businesses are taking a lot of extra money that they shouldnt be only because we got rid of pennies.

Not really. With $X.99 prices, you're being rounded up if you buy one or two items, and down if you buy three or four. The absolute most you'll ever miss out on is two cents per cash transaction, and that's roughly balanced out by all the times you make an extra two cents. Using the magic of Excel, I just took a look at my debit/credit statements up to the end of July (I haven't done August yet) and rounded all of those numbers to the nearest $0.05, and apparently I would have lost 28 cents if I'd used cash for every single one of those transactions (which is unrealistic, especially where some of them were online bill payments). I'm okay with missing an absolute maximum of 28 cents in seven months. That's not particularly significant on that scale.
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