Soon-to-be receipt revolution in Poland?

The plan of the Ministry of Finance in Poland is to introduce e-receipts. The use of this innovation is to be voluntary for both stores and buyers. Let us remind you, the law has already defined that possibility for online cash registers.

Regarding this, a receipt will be sent to customers' phone's e-mail or SMS boxes in the future. This is - at least in theory - the e-receipts, which the government has just given the green light, are supposed to look like.

But, according to the state of Government, it is important to plan logistics issues, so that the e-receipt helps to shorten the time of shopping, and not extend the queues at the checkout. Also, retailers need to develop good methods of submitting data for receipt of receipts. It must be remembered that the GDPR obliges to secure the collection and processing of data. Therefore, the issue of a safe process of collecting a telephone number for this purpose will be important, as well as safety data storage and ensuring that the whole thing works efficiently.

A way to avoid problems in the area of personal data protection may be, for example, to organize the system of generating and transferring e-receipts so that the cashier does not have access to customer data. Automatically sending e-receipts could be available when finalizing purchases, e.g. with electronic payment.

Some retail chains have decided to anticipate the impending wave of digitization and have already made it possible to collect e-receipts in their shopping applications, although they are still legally obliged to issue them also in paper form. Mobile text messaging turns out to be very flexible. The discount codes sent with them are easy to use both when shopping online and simply show them to the cashier in a stationary store wanting to get a discount. But, maybe this solution will not be convenient for all retailers.

However, not all customers will be willing to install shopping apps, especially those they visit only occasionally. Similarly, many brands will probably find that their application for collecting receipts is too much of an investment for them and will stay with e-mails or texts.

It remains to be seen whether and when this solution will be possible and how it will be regulated. So far, nothing precise has been defined.