The national economics radio magazine Marketplace recently featured CUNA Senior Director of Advocacy for Payments and Cybersecurity Lance Noggle on a segment looking at the pademic-related coin shortage. The Federal Reserve has urged Americans to keep putting coins into circulation, and while coin supply may be lacking in some areas, Noggle notes he wouldn’t necessarily call it a shortage.

“It’s not that there’s a shortage of coins, there are plenty out there, they’re just stuck in someone’s drawer, or a jar, and not getting taken into retailer of financial institution,” he said.

Noggle represents CUNA on the U.S. Coin Task Force and adds that he thought the task force wouldn’t be needed past the lockdowns.

“We thought it was a short-term issue, but with continues use of electronic payments, we think it could be new norm, where coins don’t circulate quite as fast,” he said.

The U.S. Mint has also called on consumers to help return spare change into circulation.

The U.S. Coin Task Force urges the American public to:

• Spend their coin.
• Deposit coin at financial institutions.
• Redeem coin at coin kiosks.
• Use the hashtag #getcoinmoving in social media posts to promote awareness and understanding of this issue.