The Omniva coin collection campaign will continue in the new year

Postitatud:

28.12.2023

Eesti Pank and Omniva will continue their coin exchange service in the first part of 2024. Coins can be exchanged in the Tallinn Järve and Tartu Kvartali post offices for a small service fee. The coin collection programme has been running for three months and has so far taken in over 3 million coins, 65% of which are one and two-cent coins.

“The pilot project for the coin collection campaign has proved very popular. Allowing coins to be returned through post offices for three months has helped us put over three million coins back into circulation”, said Rait Roosve, Head of the Cash and Infrastructure Department at Eesti Pank.

He noted that everybody who has participated in the campaign has helped it reach the goal for the pilot project of collecting above all small denomination coins for reissue into circulation. The coins returned most have been one and two-cent coins, which have made up 65% of the total of coins collected. “Every additional coin that is brought back is one new coin fewer that Eesti Pank needs to produce. This reduces the environmental footprint of coin circulation a little and reduces the cost to the central bank of making the coins”, he explained. Enough coins were collected during the campaign for Eesti Pank to cover the average demand for coins for three months.

Eesti Pank and Omniva agreed to continue the campaign into the new year as a lot of coins continue to be returned even with the small service fee, and the public has engaged enthusiastically with the campaign. “There is still a lot of engagement from the public with this service and there are people going to the Tallinn Järve and Tartu Kvartali post offices with their coins at least once every day. The self-service coin counting machines count the coins that are brought and issue a receipt for the total value that can be used to buy services from the post office or to receive the amount in larger denominations minus the service fee”, explained Margit Ratnik, Head of New Services at Omniva.

Omniva plans to continue the coin exchange service at the two post offices until the rounding rules have been decided. Given that producing one and two-cent coins has a significant environmental impact but the coins rarely return to circulation, Eesti Pank considers that introducing rounding rules for one and two-cent coins would be a lasting solution for the efficient circulation of coins. It has consequently proposed that rounding rules be introduced for one and two-cent coins, and the Ministry of Finance has sent these proposals to various stakeholder groups to gather their opinions. The rounding rules would mean that the final price of a basket of shopping would be rounded to the nearest five cents at the till, though only if the buyer is paying in cash.

Background

Eesti Pank and Omniva started the joint campaign in September that let people exchange all the euro coins they had accumulated over time at the post offices in the Tallinn Järve and Tartu Kvartali shopping centres, initially with no service fee. The free part of the campaign had a clear goal of collecting one million coins. Once a million coins had been collected, a small service fee was introduced and the campaign continued. It was initially planned to run the campaign until the end of 2023, but because the service proved so popular, and in order to reduce the environmental footprint of coin circulation, the exchange of euro coins will continue at the Omniva Tallinn Järve and Tartu Kvartali post offices. A service fee of 5% of the amount exchanged is applied for the coin exchange, and up to three kilograms of coins can be exchanged at one go. The focus of the campaign was on one and two-cent coins, as Eesti Pank issues about two truckloads of them into circulation each year. People receive these coins as change from shops, but rarely spend them themselves, and the coins are often only used once and rarely return to circulation.

See the distribution by denomination of the coins collected in the joint Eesti Pank and Omniva campaign.

Additional information:
Hanna Jürgenson

Communications Specialist
Eesti Pank
Tel: 5692 0930
Press enquiries: [email protected]