The People Behind Every Cash Transaction

Section 5 of the Common Cents Act, passed by the House as H.R.3074 on July 14, 2026 and by the Senate as S. 1525 on August 7, 2026, directs the Federal Reserve to examine the potential effects of penny shortages and cash rounding on low-income, unbanked, and older Americans. Congress is asking the right question. Cash is not evenly distributed: Federal Reserve payment diary data shows households earning under $25,000 rely on cash for roughly a quarter of their payments, compared to under one in ten for the highest-income households. Whatever rounding does, it does most to the people Section 5 names.

The evidence so far is reassuring on the method and cautionary on the practice. Symmetric rounding, applied consistently, is close to neutral: the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond estimated the total national drift at roughly six million dollars per year across all US consumers. The risk to vulnerable cash users is not rounding itself. It is inconsistent rounding: methods that round up against cash payers, rules applied differently store to store, and cash customers receiving a different effective price than an EBT card charged to the exact cent, which federal SNAP equal-treatment rules prohibit.

Here is the hard part of the question Congress asked: today, nobody can observe actual rounding outcomes at the register. A study can survey and model, but it cannot see whether a given transaction rounded up or down, whether the method was applied symmetrically over time, or whether SNAP customers received the same terms. Those answers only exist if a verifiable record of each rounding event exists.

That is the gap Centsless was built to close. A per-transaction, append-only record of every rounding event, the rule applied, the direction, the amount, makes the Section 5 question measurable instead of estimated. Where that infrastructure runs, symmetric treatment is not a policy assertion. It is a provable fact, transaction by transaction, for exactly the consumers Congress is asking about.

Cash accounts for 14% of all U.S. consumer transactions, behind credit cards at 35% and debit cards at 30%. Consumers make an average of 7 cash payments per month, a figure that has held steady since 2020 even as total monthly payments per consumer climbed to a record 48. The dollar value remains substantial: an estimated $791.3 billion in cash spending in 2024.

The critical equity dimension is who still depends on cash most. Households earning less than $25,000 per year use cash for 24% of their payments, nearly triple the 9% rate among households earning over $150,000. Adults 55 and older use cash for 19% of transactions compared to 10% for those aged 18 to 24.

The financial harm to cash-dependent consumers extends far beyond the inability to shop at cashless stores. Operating outside the banking system imposes a well-documented "poverty premium," a set of fees and surcharges that extract wealth from those who can least afford it.

Check-cashing fees represent the most direct cost. Typical rates range from 1.5 to 3% of face value for payroll and government checks, with personal checks averaging a 9.36% fee. An unbanked worker cashing an $1,800 biweekly paycheck at a 2.5% rate pays roughly $50 per check, or $1,300 per year, simply to access their own wages. Over a 40-year career, the Brookings Institution estimates this reliance costs more than $40,000 in direct fees.

Financially vulnerable households, constituting about 15% of the population, drive 27% of all fees and interest spending nationally. These households spend an average of 16% of their annual income on financial service fees and interest, compared to just 1% for financially healthy households.

Recognition that cashless commerce discriminates against vulnerable populations has produced a rapidly expanding body of legislation. Massachusetts has required cash acceptance since 1978. Since 2019, a wave of new laws has emerged: New Jersey enacted penalties up to $2,500 for first offense. Rhode Island, Colorado, Delaware, Connecticut, Oregon, and Montana all followed with cash acceptance statutes. New York State, effective March 2026, prohibits food stores and retailers from refusing cash for in-person transactions. At the federal level, the Payment Choice Act has been introduced in every Congress since 2019.

The policy language consistently frames cash acceptance through an equity lens. Society is increasingly recognizing that access to fair cash transactions is a consumer right, not a convenience.