As of today, Feb 4th, the Royal Canadian Mint will start phasing out the use of the penny. The coin will no longer be distributed. This means sooner or later, we are going to run out of pennies.

The penny is still legal tender and we will accept them indefinitely...so don't throw them away just yet! We still have a small stash of pennies left so we will be able to give exact change for cash transactions in the coming days. However, once we run out, we will not be able to get new supply from the bank and so we will adopt the rounding guidelines as recommended by the Government of Canada.

The total purchase amount, including HST, will be rounded up or down to the nearest 5-cent increment. This is applicable to cash payments only. Credit card and debit transactions will continue to be charged the exact amount as usual.

For more information: http://www.mint.ca/store/template/default/pennyinfo.html