How will e-receipts transform the retail sector in Hungary?

It is required by law for Hungarian retailers who use cash registers to give customers a printed receipt following the sale. But if all goes as planned, this could change next year. The National Tax and Customs Administration is putting a lot of effort into coming up with a replacement that will be digital but still have the functional advantages of the receipt.

Given that a sizable portion of receipts are thrown away, one of the reasons for the upcoming shift is the new digital receipt system's potential to reduce waste production. On the other hand, it appears that online receipting also presents a variety of fresh digital opportunities.

So far, there is no official legal or technical regulation for the area of introducing e-receipts in Hungary. However, some news has been announced for this Monday. According to the Head of the Risk Analysis and Data Science Department of the NAV, if everything goes according to the time schedule, in the next period, the e-Receipt could be launched in July 2024, i.e., in more than a year, and the entire transition will take all in all up to 4 years.

Based on the information stated by the representatives of NAV, what will happen is not that the paper receipt will be digitized, but that the receipt will already be digitally created and will be an authentic receipt. However, if a customer still insists on a paper receipt when this system starts, the retailer will still be able to print it for them based on the first published details. What this also means in practice is that the current cash registers will either need to be replaced or they will need to be able to issue the new e-receipts once the system goes online.

The regulation is expected sometime in autumn 2023, and it is expected that from that period up until the summer of 2024, the whole system will be ready for launch. As stated by the NAV representative, the receipts created and stored in this way will remain available in the online system for years after their issuance.