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I've heard so many theories about this. Can someone shed some light...

Some say it's for psychological purposes, others claim it's got something to do with tax, and some say the cents value is used by the store to signify if an item is discontinued/on sale.

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I've heard it began when some shop assistants were, when selling an item, simply pocketing the payment for the goods themselves and never putting the money into the till. To counter this, the shop owners made it so that almost nobody would pay for an item with exact change, meaning that the transaction would have to be put into the till system in order to open the change drawer.

Interesting theory, no idea how accurate it is.

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