Common Cents Act Arrives in the Senate — Referred to Banking Committee, No Hearing Yet

One day after the U.S. House passed the Common Cents Act (H.R. 3074) by voice vote, the bill began its journey through the other chamber. According to the congressional record, H.R. 3074 was received in the Senate on July 15, 2026, read twice, and referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. As of early August, the committee had not scheduled a hearing or markup — the standard, quiet next step for a bill sent over from the House.

A Familiar Committee — and a Stalled Companion

The referral lands H.R. 3074 in the same committee that already holds the Senate's own version of the bill. S. 1525, the Senate companion also titled the Common Cents Act, has sat in Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs without a hearing since it was introduced in April 2025. Both measures now await the committee's attention in the same place.

Senate passage is far from automatic. A House-passed bill can wait months for committee action, and leadership has given no public signal on timing. For now, the practical status is simple: the bill is in the Senate's hands, and nothing is on the calendar.

Where the House and Senate Bills Diverge

The version the House passed was a floor substitute that differs in important ways from the companion still pending in the Senate. The House-passed text:

• Makes cash rounding permissive — businesses may round cash totals to the nearest five cents, but are not required to — with a legal safe harbor for those that follow the symmetric scheme.
• Adds a Federal Reserve reporting mandate on penny supply and the impact of shortages and rounding on low-income, older, unbanked, and underbanked consumers.
• Gives the Treasury the option to test a redesigned, lower-cost nickel — and, critically, directs that any new composition be evaluated for its effect on coin-accepting equipment, requiring it to have, in the bill's words, a "minimal adverse impact on machines designed to accept coins."

As trade outlets covering the coin-operated-equipment industry noted, the introduced Senate bill "does not contain the House provisions addressing nickel composition or coin-machine compatibility." Whether the Senate preserves that language — of keen interest to vending and payments operators — is one of the open questions now that the bill is in committee.

What to Watch

• Whether Senate Banking schedules a hearing or markup on H.R. 3074 or S. 1525 (none scheduled as of early August 2026).
• Whether any Senate-passed version keeps the House's nickel-composition and vending-machine safeguards, or reverts to the simpler companion text.
• The 20 states with their own rounding laws are unaffected either way — the federal bill would sit on top of, not displace, the existing state patchwork.

Sources

• H.R. 3074 — All Actions (Congress.gov)
• H.R. 3074 — bill status and text (GovTrack)
• Common Cents Act moves to Senate with vending safeguards (Vending Market Watch, Jul 20, 2026)
• Common Cents Act Clears the House, Putting the Nickel's Alloy and the Cent's Future in Senate Hands (World Numismatic News, Jul 23, 2026)
• S. 1525 (Congress.gov)