When a penny for your thoughts isn’t worth a dime
Can a shopkeeper, to coin a phrase, tell you that "your money is no good here"?
Sometimes useless facts and figures could save you a truckload of time. A little known fact in South Africa is how useless our coin system is. For instance, say you had wanted to buy a loaf of bread costing R9.50 and you tried to pay for it in 50 cent pieces. Did you know that a shopkeeper could refuse to accept your money?
Well, they could, and it would be perfectly legal for them to chase you away. We doubt they would, but say you tried paying for it in 5 cent pieces…
You get the drift – too many coins is bad, but how many is too many?
South Africa’s Reserve Bank imposes hard limits on the amount of coins consumers can pay with for each transaction.
You cannot use more than ten 5 cent pieces per transaction. In other words‚ no more than 50 cents in 5 cent pieces.
If you’re paying with coins in denominations of between 10 and 50 cents‚ you can only tender up to R5 worth (so buying that loaf of bread is not going to happen) and in the case of coins of R1 or higher‚ the limit is R50 worth.
You may also have noted that the 2015 series of 10 cent pieces are made of cheaper copper-coated steel rather than the older bronze plated…. Talk about money losing its value.
But we digress. To put it into perspective, most countries have limits on the number of coins that can be used in single transactions. The reason is rather simple: Time literally is money, as far as most reserve banks go.
If you are in a queue waiting to buy something at a shop and the person in front of you suddenly decides to pay for all his R2000 worth of groceries in 50 cent pieces, you will be in for a long wait.
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