What do you think would happen?

What would happen if the top 10 retailers in the US started rounding all of their cash transactions to the nearest nickel instead of the nearest penny?  Do you think the rest of the retailers would follow?  Do you think it would hurt their business or profitability? Would it save them money or cost them money?  How many of the top retailers would need to switch over in order to get the majority of retailers to switch over within 5 years? Just one, half of the top 10, all of the top 10, or all the top 20? As everyone knows, Wal-Mart is the top retailer in the US based on sales. Could they do it by themselves? If the gap between first and second grew larger, or their sales growth outpaced everyone else, I think it would happen much quicker.  I think several would jump on right away, and others would wait to see how it affected the juggernaut that is Wal-Mart before deciding.  If Wal-Mart did it, then I think there would be a significant shift in penny requests from the Federal Reserve that same year.  If Wal-Mart wanted to kill the penny, I think they could do it single-handedly. If 2 or 3 of the other top 10 did it together, then they could probably get the results as quickly as Wal-Mart could all by itself.  Once all of the top 10 retailers are on board, the penny would be dead within a year.

Of course, this is coming at the problem from the opposite angle and as you can see, it's the long way around the problem.  If the government decided to switch off the penny minting machine tomorrow, then every business would have little choice but to switch over and the penny would be gone overnight.  If it is initiated by retailers instead, then I could see the process taking many, many years.  The key is in the top 10 or 20 retailers.  If one of them got on board, and all went well, then it would only be a matter of time before the penny was gone.  I've decided that when I pay cash, I'm going to tell them to give me all of my change EXCEPT the pennies.  I don't want them.