On 19 Jun, 16:46, "Tim Roll-Pickering" 
wrote:
> MIG wrote:
> > Staff were told that we could still accept ½p coins from customers,
> > but only in pairs.  This was strongly emphasised and always struck me
> > as bizarre.
>
> It sounds like a customer friendly move - "We still accept your out-of-date
> coins" - as well as an way of ensuring people suddenly have, for want of a
> better term, credit that can only be used there.

Yes indeed, but the emphasis on pairs implied something significant
when it was neither likely that someone could offer a single ½p nor
that it would matter much if they did.

>
> > Presumably Sainsburys had an arrangement whereby it could cash in all
> > its ½p coins by some deadline, but even if staff accepted them not in
> > pairs, the entire Sainsburys chain could only ever have been stuck
> > with one odd ½p if they ended up with an odd number overall.
>
> Well when would anyone have reason to pay a sum ending in ½p? And how could
> the store convert or give that back in change?

Presumably if they offered the correct price for some stilton
calculated to the nearest ½p and the staff forgot to round it down.
Maybe the pairs instruction was a way of making sure that staff had to
round down.

>
> I also wonder what happened to anyone's bank balance that ended in ½p.

If half the population's accounts ended in ½p that could be a bit of
extra/loss of money for the banks (about £200 000 between the UK
banks?), whichever way it was rounded, but I bet that hardly anyone
either paid or deposited amounts ending in ½p in banks for a long time
before that.  Interest resulting in fractions of p would work as it
does now.