(Radio Iowa) – At least one Iowa-based bank is telling its customers they can no longer get rolls or boxes of pennies, and checks that don’t end in a zero or five will have to be deposited or reissued. This follows an order from President Trump that the U-S Treasury stop making pennies. Adam Gregg, president and C-E-O of the Iowa Bankers Association, says the government is expected to quit producing new pennies for circulation in early 2026, but Iowa banks are already feeling the impact. “It’s going to be very difficult — in some cases, in some places — for banks to be able to access the penny, which means it may be difficult for businesses and consumers in those areas to do that,” Gregg says. “What’s tricky about it is, there’s kind of some randomness to when a distribution location may run out.” Gregg says many other countries have gone through this process of eliminating a small form of currency, and while there may be some bumps along the way, he trusts it will eventually lead to a streamlining of cash transactions.

Still, Gregg says the I-B-A and similar organizations in other states are asking banking regulators and Congress to provide more guidance on how the elimination of pennies will work.  “I think there’s going to be uneven access to pennies here for a while as this process plays out,” Gregg says. “I think what the Federal Reserve is finding is that while the decision was made to end production, the way it’s being implemented is restricting its circulation, perhaps more than they intended earlier on because the penny is still legal currency.” Gregg says it makes sense, with an S, to stop making cents, with a C, as one report shows the U-S Treasury lost more than 85-million dollars on penny production last year alone.

“It costs between three-and-a-half to to four cents and make one penny, which of course is only worth one cent,” Gregg says, “so it really does make sense from a government efficiency perspective, from a deployment of resources perspective, to end the production of the penny.” Gregg, who served as Iowa’s lieutenant governor until September of 2024, says businesses across Iowa may soon have to alter their pricing structure, adjusting prices to end in either a zero or a five. “What’s probably going to happen, and you’re going to start to see businesses doing this, they’ll start rounding to the nearest nickel and display some policies,” Gregg says. “This will be for cash transactions only. Frankly, any more, most transactions are happening electronically or with cards, but many people do still choose to use cash.”

A federal study finds only around 16-percent of U-S transactions now rely on cash, the rest are electronic — though some industries still rely on coins, like vending machines and laundromats. Coins have been discontinued in the U-S before, as recently as 2011 with the suspending of production of the dollar coin, and throughout history, as far back as 1857, when Congress ordered the end of the half-cent coin.