The US government is now implementing a policy whereby RFID tags will be inserted into the new $1 presidential coins.

If the experiment is successful it could usher in a super easy automated micro payment system that would make cash registers and human to human money exchange obsolete.

The Treasury is focused on popularizing the notion of large denomination coins to save on the substantial printing cost of 6.5 billion paper dollars a year, which on average last about 18 months in circulation . The Government’s last attempt to introduce a $1 dollar coin, the Sacagawea dollar was a disaster with 97% of the public having never used it.

A possible flaw in such use of RFID tags is that coins cost more to produce than paper bills.  However, coins can also last for many years, as opposed to paper, which has a very short life.

Not all the coins will have RFID tags.  An as yet unknown percentage will be allocated in order to test the feasibility of such a wide deployment later on.  The government hopes that, with RFID embedded into coins, money transfers would become easier, eliminated the need for humans to count the coins.

Everything else would cost money to upgrade, instead of keeping the machines that currently work.  Vending machines, for example, would have to be remade to accommodate the coins and there would be very little advantages to changing over.

What the government should do is simply stop printing one dollar bills.  If the only thing that is available is one dollar coins, then people will complain for a while, then simply accept that the $1 is now a coin.  Once that is accomplished, a $2 and $5 coin can also be made.  Then there would be no necessity of putting RFID into the tags because the government would already have saved the government thousands.