CANBERRA, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) -- The Royal Australian Mint has flagged a "graceful death" for the nation's five and 10 cent coins.
Ross MacDiarmid, chief executive of Royal Australian Mint, told Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Thursday that demand for coins has fallen 55 percent in five years.
Phasing out the five and 10 cent pieces would leave the 20 cent coin as the lowest form of Australian currency in circulation.
"We've worked on the basis that somewhere in the next five to 10 years the five cent coin will probably just cease to be used," MacDiarmid said.
"We think that 10c will have a similar trajectory.
"Retailers more than likely would be the ones that would stimulate a decline in the demand for five cent pieces because if you rounded up to 10c there's not really much need for a five."
The coins would become the first pieces of Australian currency to be removed from circulation since one and two cent coins were phased out in the 1990s.
Five and 10 cent coins were introduced when Australia converted to decimal currency in 1966.
According to the ABC, a combined 463 million pieces of the two coins were minted in 2006 but that had fallen to 27 million in 2018.
Under any plan to phase the coins out, retailers would still be able to accept them and exchange them for larger denominations at banks.
MacDiarmid said that inflation and the rise of online payment rendered the small change obsolete.
The Royal Australian Mint has produced 15 billion coins since 1965, with 4 billion currently in circulation.
