【Peggy Markoff】

Change is Peggy Markoffdefinitely not welcome in this case.

200 employees from a bus company were surprised on payday -- not by the amount of money they got, but by their weight.

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The Baoying Car and Transport Company from Yangzhou, China, decided to pay employees their wages of up to hundreds of dollars each, in 1 yuan coins -- the lowest denomination, worth about 15 cents USD.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Local papers reported that staff were paid in bundles of 100 coins.

"Well, coins may also be money, but people get their pay transferred into the bank," an anonymous employee told Jiangsu China. "It wasn't very convenient."

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The company had paid out a total of 200,000 yuan ($29,010.31) in coins to clear out change that was paid to the company over the spring festival rush, according to Gu Fengyun, chair of the employees' union.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

The company had been unable to bank in the coins because it would have involved a lot of manpower and specialised equipment. It had been storing over 500,000 yuan ($72,525.78) in a warehouse.

A bank representative echoed those sentiments, saying company and bank staff would have been required to count, pack and disinfect the coins. "It's not like they could just come in and dump them here, we still have to count the coins," said a bank stuff. "Every time we receive coins, it's like a war."

It later decided that employees could return the coins, after backlash.

Over 347 million people -- half of all smartphone users in China -- used their phones to pay for goods in real life last year. Perhaps it's time to switch away from coins.

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