Electronic Fiscal Receipts in Retail: Advantages and Benefits

Traditional Fiscal Receipts

Everyone is used to the fact that when buying goods in a retail store, you receive a paper cash receipt. Someone uses it to verify correctness of the prices, someone stores it for claiming a warranty, and someone simply throws it into a trash box next to the check-out.

The printed paper receipts use a special thermal paper, which is made with bisphenol A (BPA) as a component of the thermally reactive coating on the surface of the receipts. It raised many concerns about potential health risks, as people can probably absorb this chemical through the skin (Plastic Pollution Coalition).

Besides, it is impossible to recycle and reuse paper receipts like regular paper. If exposed to direct sunlight even for a brief time, they quickly fade and become unusable, for example, to return purchased goods.

States cannot abandon the concept of the fiscal receipt. This seems to be the only way to ensure the completeness of retail revenue accounting. But it is possible to opt-out paper receipts and switch to their electronic versions.

Advantages of Transition to Electronic Receipts

An electronic receipt contents the same information as a paper receipt, but it has no limits on the length and the size of the data. Merchants are trying to reduce the amount of printed information to reduce the length of paper and save costs. In addition, all receipts have a fixed width. That limits the ability to print long lines.

There are no such restrictions for electronic receipts. They may contain more information, including various promotional offers from merchants or from advertising partners.

Retailer can deliver an electronic receipt either by e-mail, or via SMS, or save it in a consumer storage. SMS delivery is the fastest and dependable channel but requires an SMS gateway in the country and costs money for the sender.

On average, the cost of an SMS is 10 times the cost of a paper receipt, and this is a significant barrier to the penetration of electronic receipts. E-mail is free, but it is inconvenient for the cashier to enter it during check-out. Also, the manual entry is always prone to mistakes.

In several countries, retailers use a taxpayer identification number (TIN) to identify the buyer so he can later accept the receipt for expenses. But to deliver a receipt to the buyer, there must be a link between the TIN and a mobile phone number or e-mail address.

As an interesting alternative is the transition to electronic receipts that are not only delivered to consumers but also stored by tax administration for further processing. Processing may include, for example, a summary of expenses and their categorization, allocation of receipts that deduct expenses for reducing tax returns, execution of warranty obligations, etc.

Fiscal receipt is a confirmation of the fact of a purchase, and consumers can use this in many user scenarios, for example, in several loyalty programs for accruing bonuses. Electronic receipts enable new previously impossible loyalty programs, for example, direct to consumers (D2C) from manufacturers of FMCG goods and banks. Through a network of distribution and marketing, the manufacturer of such products, such as Coca Cola, never knew their consumers. Now they do by having an electronic receipt after selling a can of Coca-Cola in any retail store. The manufacturers then can directly communicate with consumers and provide different incentives, bonuses and discounts.

Tax administrations can create a digital infrastructure for automatic collection, storing of electronic receipts and further access to this storage via mobile application. During check-out, the retailer provides the buyer’s mobile phone number or e-mail address, and the receipt goes to the central tax database, where is available for the consumer.

Consumer logs in the system through a web or mobile application, using an email address or mobile phone number and gains access to his receipts and results of their processing. If the buyer received a paper receipt, he uses a tax mobile application to scan the QR code on the receipt and stores it in the system.

To apply for tax deductions, he must add the TIN to his profile, and then the system will track and process everything automatically. Consumers can give access to their receipts to third parties in return for financial incentives. That turns receipt into a real asset. In addition, they can use a chat bot to access all receipts for review and verification.

This approach helps to create a digital infrastructure and connect to it both sellers and buyers, as well as various technology companies that create digital solutions for consumers. This ecosystem can live and grow independently, involving an increasing number of retailers, consumers, FMCG manufacturers, and financial institutions.