E-receipt in 2020?

From the beginning of 2020, selected retailers introduced the possibility of receiving an e-receipt for purchases. The innovative project is just at the initial stage of implementation. Electronic receipts will work on a par with standard paper variants.

The introduction of the e-receipt still raises a lot of controversy among experts. On the one hand, it will bring several benefits to the health of employees and the environment, on the other hand, it raises doubts related to personal data protection or consumer rights in respect of honoring returns and reclamations.

The annual consumption of paper for printing receipts is estimated at 600 thousand kg in Poland. That’s nearly 12 billion receipts, which can be replaced by electronic equivalents. Also, standard receipt paper contains poisonous bisphenol A, which in the long run may endanger the cashier’s health.

E-receipt – advantages, controversies

Legislators point out the most important advantages of e-receipts:

• elimination of paper from distribution;
• quick and convenient access to safely stored receipt files;
• reducing the costs incurred by the entrepreneur (mainly by reducing the costs of device operation and a volume of printouts);
• warranty of the receipt’s authenticity, which will improve the tax system’s efficiency (financial return to the state budget is estimated at even 10 billion PLN per year);

Experts working on the e-receipt implementation still have not specified how to adapt the new mechanism to the standards of personal data protection. Sending an e-receipt to the provided email address – or using a mobile application – forces the disclosure of customer’s data and as a consequence, leads to consent to use this data to perform the operation. This also implies saving it in the company’s internal database. After-sales processes would also require more extensive use of customer personal data than the paper standard suggests.

The Ministry of Finance announced that the adjustment of e-receipts with the personal data protection law will require a legislative change. For this reason, it is hard to specify a precise deadline for the project. According to the current status of work, e-receipts will operate in parallel with traditional receipts. Only the proportion of their use should change – in favor of the electronic version.

E-receipt – from when and on what terms

There are still no clear arrangements in what form and in which specific framework e-receipts should be introduced. Currently, work is underway to choose the best method under the Platforma Detalistów project, which is attended by representatives of Przelewy24 and the Cashless Development Foundation.