Upright the Six of Coins is read as generosity and the flow of giving and receiving, aid offered or accepted in fair measure; reversed, as generosity with strings attached, or an imbalance in which one party holds power over the other through what is given or withheld.
This is one of the few pip cards where Waite's own reversed meaning maps closely onto later practice rather than diverging from it: he gives jealousy, envy and inequitable arrangements for the reversed card, close to the debt and imbalance most readers still name today. The continuity is unusual because the deck's guiding image, the merchant's balance, straightforwardly supports both readings without needing later reinterpretation the way several other cards in this run do.
The older cartomantic tradition, working from a bare six of coins with no picture attached, gave a plainer meaning of a present or gift received, without the moral weighing the Rider-Waite-Smith scene introduces; the ethical question of who holds power in an exchange of aid is very much a product of Smith's specific composition rather than of the number six or the earth suit generally.
In practice, readers who slow down on this card usually ask not whether help is being given but on what terms, since the picture insists the balance is being watched by someone even as it is being used.