SPRINGFIELD -- There's no more gold in them thar supermarkets as Big Y World Class Markets is ending its gold coin promotion after 20 years.

Instead, Springfield-based Big Y will offer discounts and special offers loaded onto customers' myBigY accounts, Vice President of Corporate Communications Claire D'Amour-Daley said. The myBigY accounts are reviewable online and via mobile devices.

"We're replacing the gold coins with something better," she said. "We were getting complaints, increasing complaints, that customers didn't bring their gold coins, keep track of their gold coins and didn't like  keeping track of the discounts."

The coins were also a headache for cashiers and store managers who had to keep track of them, collect them and issue them.

"We found we could be much more effective going digital," D'Amour-Daley said.

A digital discount program also allows Big Y to target specific customers with specific offers more effectively.

"Just like every retailer in the world," she said.

Big Y will stop handing out new gold coins on Jan. 3. The last day to redeem them will be Jan. 31.

Big Y already asks customers to load promotions in its ads onto their myBigY accounts.

The Massachusetts and Connecticut supermarket chain also will roll out a new cash register system in the coming months, one that won't be compatible with the coins.

The checkout game will stay, she said, only it'll be more interactive and not just pressing a button to spin digital slot machine wheels.

"They (customers) do like the game, which is why we still have it," D'Amour-Daley said. "It might ask you, 'Which Lyman's pie do you prefer?"

The prize will be a discount, often a discount related to the question in the game,  on the myBigY account.

Big Y was the only supermarket that ran the coin promotions, D'Amour-Daley said. That made it hard to explain the system to new customers, particularly when Big Y moves into a new market, as it will when it opens a new store in Marlborough, Connecticut, soon.

Originally, the promotion, introduced in 1998, had four tiers and colored coins: red, blue, silver and gold.

"The innovation was that we could change the promotion without printing new coupons," she said. "We had a lot of fun with it."

Over the years, Big Y eliminated the tiers, finally merging the silver coin with the customer loyalty card.

Big Y operates 80 locations including 70 supermarkets, 39 pharmacies, Fresh Acres Market, Table & Vine Fine Wines and Liquors and 8 Big Y Express gas and convenience locations with over 11,000 employees.

Brothers Paul and Gerald D'Amour founded the store in 1936 and named it after an intersection in Chicopee where two roads converge to form a "Y." Management of the chain is now in the second and third generation of the family.