The Swiss Miracle: Money

In the last of an eight-part series on Swiss identity, we take a light-hearted look at attitudes in Switzerland towards money.

Switzerland’s five-centime coin is not exactly a crowd-pleaser. But despite being practically useless, more of them have been minted over the past decade than any other Swiss coin.

The Swiss love money, or so the saying goes. The second part of this cliché is up for debate, but the first seems to correspond to reality. Just look at how excited many people get about the latest series of banknotes and how the website of the national mint, Swissmint, illustrates each series with anecdotes and quirky facts about its production.

However, it has to be said that not every coin and not every banknote enjoys the same affection or notoriety. One of the “stars” of Swiss numismatics is without doubt the five-franc coin, which features the face of a shepherd (no, it’s not William Tell) with the smug expression of someone who knows his value. The “fiver” is also almost exaggeratedly large and wouldn’t look out of place in a pirate’s coffers along with gold doubloons; more than a few can cause problems for even the most capacious wallet.

And then there’s the mystic aura surrounding the 1,000-franc note, the highest-value note in the world. Few are ever seen, but they represent as much as 57% of the value of all Swiss banknotes in circulation. Some say its existence facilitates money laundering (a briefcase stuffed with 1,000-franc notes contains as much money as about five briefcases with 200-euro notes), but attempts to abolish it have come to nothing.

Let’s not forget the diminutive half-franc coin. Careful, it’s not the 50-centime/Rappen coin: it is in fact engraved with the inscription “½ Fr”.

Even the coin that at first glance seems less special, the ten-centime/Rappen coin, gained fame when it entered the Guinness World Records in 2021 as the oldest original coin in circulation. It has had the same minting since 1879 and the earliest examples are still in use.

But then there’s the five-centime/Rappen coin. Despite its distinctive gold livery, the coin with the lowest value in Switzerland – it’s worth about a nickel in the US – is most probably also the least popular. The reason, of course, is its impracticality. These coins are not accepted by vending machines and people give you a dirty look if you start counting them out in shops. Children like them for their distinctive colour, but little more.

Yet there are currently 1.34 billion of them in circulation, 25% more than ten years ago. No other Swiss currency has grown as much in number.

This is a surprising figure, especially in the age of cashless payments, but one that has a logical explanation, according to a recent article by Swiss public radio, SRF.

Unlike other coins, which easily re-enter the monetary cycle via shops, the sad fate of the five-centime/Rappen coin is to end up gathering dust in a drawer, crammed into the jars of the many child collectors or pocketed by tourists who want an unobtrusive souvenir. In short, they’re out of action.

As a result, they have to be put back into circulation. This year Swissmint will produce 26 million of them, at a cost this year of 4.8 centime/Rappen each. Last year, at 6.9 centime/Rappen, it actually cost more to make the coin than it was nominally worth.

For these reasons, some people would welcome the death of the five-centime/Rappen coin.

On a political level, it was last discussed ten years ago, when a motion to that effect was tabled in the House of Representatives. The motion was supported by the Swiss business association economiesuisse and the Swiss Federal Railways but was opposed by consumer protection associations, which feared a rounding up of prices. In the end, the motion was rejected.

However, perhaps it will be discussed again soon, also in light of the fact that today only 36% of daily transactions in Switzerland are still made with cash, compared to 70% in 2017.

In any case, given the slowness of Swiss politics – and the fact that there are probably more important problems to think about – the drawers of Swiss households will probably continue to fill up with five-centime/Rappen coins for a long time to come.