Why haven’t receipts gone digital yet? Why is paper still used for this?
I don’t know about you but when I receive a receipt at my local Co-Op or Tesco I simply put it into the bag and it gets thrown away along with the bag once my shopping is put away. And I can’t even begin to imagine how much paper and ink is wasted along with all this. Sure it’s recyclable, but who cares? Your still chopping down thousands (probably tens of thousands) of trees for all these wasted receipts.
My proposal – integrate it into bank cards. Let me click on a transaction in my online banking account and view the details for that purchase. How? Integrate it via the PIN input system, get a data standard for it all. In the end all the system would be doing is sending a few kilobytes instead of a few bytes through the fibre optic cable.
Better yet, localize the system – make it a gimmick with your store card. Let me view my Tesco receipts on my Tesco store card login online. Tesco already keep the data for market research purposes.. why not let me view it after purchasing at the store? Put in a simple ‘do you want receipts?’ option in my login so I can turn down receipts automatically upon the swiping of my club card. “Take your receipts with you!” – help me build an automatic shopping basket online of my regular goods. The possibilities of laziness are endless.
One step further – the mobile phone. Store it on my SIM card via some kind of infrared scanning. One for the future, but something to think about (especially with the emergence of payment with mobile phones in Japan, which hopefully is coming to the western world sooner rather than later).
Interesting idea.. I agree it would help save a great deal of waste regarding paper. Was this inspired by the college project you did with the SIM cards and the trams a few years ago?
Funnily enough I restored one of the two images on that project just a second ago:
http://www.jhuskisson.com/college/nottingham-tram-payment-system-another-college-presentation
I had lost it.. but found it on my girlfriend’s computer on the weekend. Highly doubt i’ll find any of the other three presentation boards missing from my college posts though.
Please check out Third Solutions. This company is working towards creating a digital receipt standard.
Thanks,
Jonathan
Never heard of those guys, but check out allEtronic.com. It was free to join, and I use them in a local supermarket here in Brea. It’s a pretty cool service. And I hear they’re gonna be in a lot more locations soon.
Craig
Hi Jamie!
I think there are a few holes in the theory you’ve identified.
1) A bank can’t receive line-item data (product descriptions) from a retailer unless the bank’s system is integrated directly into the retailers system. The bank only receives a value, type of transaction, and a merchant name, which was previously registered with the card associations (Visa, MasterCard, ect.) when the merchant was setup to accept credit cards.
2) The costs the banks would incur to integrate into the millions of retailers would be mind bloggling.
3) If you had to go to a different web site to view each of your receipts from the various retailers you purchase then create a scenario that is more frustrating then receiving a paper receipt.
Jon mentioned Third Solutions, which I think is a very poor concept for what digital receipts should be. Their idea is to issue a card to consumers – as if we don’t have enough cards to carry around already – that requires a cashier to input a membership number in order for the consumer to get a digital receipt from the retailer.
This concept is not only more frustrating for the consumer because of the extra card they now have to carry, but its also more time consuming for the retailer. Since retailers are already concerning with the amount of time their customers stand in line, Third Solutions will have a tough time selling a retailer on why to implement a system that requires more customer-cashier interaction.
There is another solution that was implemented here at Stanford University called allEtronic. Here’s how it works: I first created my free account. I then linked my credit and debit cards to this account, and only the first 6 and last 4 digits my numbers. When I use one of my linked cards to pay in a store that offers allEtronic, the system knows its me and automatically sends me a digital receipt to my online account. No printed paper, and no waste. Plus it easier to track my purchases on campus.
I called the company and they said they are being integrated into a lot of businesses outside of Stanford.
Kurt
Sure Kurt, AllElectronic sounds like a great idea. It just needs mass adoption.
I don’t agree with retailers being concerned with extra time spent in line as usually club cards or the sort are scanned whilst payment is taking place or cash is being brought out of the pocket.
The idea would mostly apply to something like the Nectar Card: http://www.nectar.com/
I’m from a company in the UK called Shoeboxx who are doing something similar. But instead of using your credit card they give you a new card, which means you don’t need to worry about not getting your receipts when you pay cash or when your credit card expires.