The cash register receipt may be "rounded" to the nearest five cents.

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Rounding to the nearest five cents
12/01/2016

To limit the use of small change, a new measure has been introduced in Belgium: tradespeople may henceforth round the amount of your cash register receipt.


You have no doubt heard about this: tradespeople may round the amount of your purchases to the nearest five cents. In practice, if the total amount ends in one or two cents, it will rounded to zero cents. If it ends in three, four, six or seven cents, it is rounded to five cents and if it ends in eight or nine cents, it is rounded to 10 cents.

This rounding is of course subject to certain rules and a symbol must be displayed by the tradespeople who practise it.


 A series of conditions are provided for in order for the rounding to be applied: the payment must be made with the consumer physically present; rounding is carried out on the total amount of the cash register receipt and not product-by-product; tradespeople must practise rounding systematically, which means upwards as well as downwards, in accordance with the rounding rules; tradespeople who practise rounding must display a specific symbol in a clearly visible manner.  RTBF

Why the will to reduce the use of one and two cent coins?

The use of one and two cent coins presents problems.
There are several disadvantages for tradespeople. First of all, the costs relating to the sorting, counting and movement of these coins to banks are very high. However, the face value of cents is low. In addition, handling small change and counting it inevitably extends the waiting time at store checkouts.
Paradoxically, for the Treasury and the banks, these coins are quite costly. It is necessary to take production, counting, storage and transport costs into account.
Consumers complain about the clutter caused by these cents in their wallets.

removal of one and two cent coins

Why extend rounding to electronic payments?

This measure was previously only permitted for cash payments. So how do you deal with a customer who pays part in cash and the remainder by credit card? Would the rounding only apply to part of their purchase? Would it not apply at all? Henceforth, electronic payments are also affected and the problem has therefore been resolved.
In addition, few tradespeople were willing to use rounding. It was difficult for them to round up the cash register receipt for one customer paying in cash and not to do so for the next customer paying by card. This difference in price due to the payment method was not always understood by customers. Extending rounding to electronic payments should therefore encourage tradespeople to use this measure more.

 

 

Rounding & Mercator

Mercator has adapted to this measure and enables you to easily manage this rounding. In your cash register management program, add a payment method called "rounding" (for example) to the other payment methods already available. This mode will take into account the rules imposed by the measure and will automatically include the difference.