Every employee of a public transport company was paid with 1,500 one-yuan coins as salary in Yingtan city, east China's Jiangxi province on Jan. 19, 2016, jxnews.com.cn reported.

The news went viral on the Internet after a netizen posted the story with a photo of coins on his Weibo, a twitter-like social media.

It is reported that since January this year, the public traffic company gave out some 500,000 coins of one yuan to its staff as monthly wages.

A manager of the company whose surname is Zhu said that the company had went to several banks for help but their request was declined because the small currency (coins) has reached saturation point in circulation in Yingtan city.

(Photo/jxnews.com.cn)

“Our company does not have a vault for the coins. And most bank branches in the city are not willing to change coins for us because they do not have a vault for coins either,” Zhu added.

In desperation, the company decided to pay the employees in coins temporarily. Over 500,000 overstock coins were paid to employees this month. Every day, the company keeps receiving some 50,000 one-yuan coins.

Bank of China's Yingtan branch has agreed to help deal with 20,000 coins every day for the company.