I have no idea if this is possible but it’s something I’ve wanted for years…when you use your card there is always lots of info sent across to the merchant and I’ve always wondered why E-mail isn’t one of these things so that the merchant emails the receipt to you instead of printing one out or because people don’t like giving away their email if the bank I.e monzo could have an area where receipts are stored from the merchant so that you always have a receipt but without the paper.
I think this would have to be an agreement between merchant and bank rather than something just a bank could do but I’m just putting it out there
it would involve a hell of a lot more…amendment of amex/mastercard/visa/jcb/diners/unionpay/etc card schemes at regional and international level as that information not currently transmitted, update of terminal firmware/software, merchant compliance with data protection legislation and registration where not currently registered…etc
Yeah agreed, this is probably an upstream change. I’d be glad if it happened though, paper receipts are useless and usually ephemeral.
For the time being, I don’t think Monzo needs to make any changes. We have records of our transactions and we’re free to refuse a receipt at checkout.
There maybe could be an option to view the “full” details about a transaction, maybe generate a digital receipt with all the necessary information. Who knows, some merchants may even accept it.
But maybe there is also an existing use case. Some merchants already ask if they can email their receipt (not the card receipt), rather than printing it for you. Of course they want to be able to market to you as well. Might be nice if you could quote a ‘Monzo customer’ email address so the receipt gets stored as a file in the app next to the relevant transaction. It would need to be really easy to display the ‘receipt email address’ in the app.
I guess this email system could also be used for forwarding other transaction-related things to the app for storage (like Amazon lets you email non-purchased PDFs and ebooks to a device for example).
Now, if Visa/Mastercard/Amex worked together and setup a generic [transactionid]@communications.allcardissuerconsortum.com style email address which needed a registered “From address” (linked to the merchant account) with the transaction id corresponding with the merchant less than 4 hours old (making spamming them impossible) which then forwarded the email to the cardholder… Security and privacy for the cardholder, ease of use for the merchant (no need to gather email addresses which takes time at POS and no data protection storage things)… sigh
What’s the actual point in keeping receipts though? Personally I always refuse them and the few times I forget to say no the receipt ends up on the sidewalk as I exit the shop anyway - I have yet to run into an issue because I didn’t keep a receipt.
The only use case I could see is if you don’t trust your bank and use the receipt to prove that you paid X amount of money while the bank counted it as Y - but even then I don’t see how the receipt would be proof - you could’ve printed it yourself for all they know.
I assume you refer to day to day spending, and not the more expensive items which may need returned (clothes) or a warranty claim made. (electronic gadgets). Sometimes receipts are a must!
I actually use this app called Receipt Hog where you can scan your receipts for points and use it to redeem amazon credit or just get it paid into PayPal. I take a picture of all my receipts so a digital one would make things difficult- I’m only one person, so it isn’t that fast, but I got £10 in 8 months.
The receipts definitely get discarded after, unless they’re from things I might take back or it’s a big-ticket item.
You do have to be crazy to do this though, it’s a tough cookie to crack but incredibly useful once done. We (Flux) are on a mission to do it and making great progress!
You’re right that getting the card schemes on board would be a major step but then the 10,000s financial institutions also need to transition to the new standard. This is fundamentally why today we still only receive ‘level 1 data’ in bank statements which includes; merchant name, date, currency and amount. The risk of downtime when transitioning to a new standard is deemed too high when the stakes are $bns.
The risk of downtime when transitioning to a new standard is deemed too high when the stakes are $bns.
Especially when you’ve got legacy systems held together with duct tape and almost no engineers capable on working on them (because everyone knowing those technologies already retired).
Not really, nothing “new” needs to happen until an “email” comes in from the merchant(s). Once that does happen, the card issuers then just need to lookup if a matching transaction is found, and if it is, then send the email to the card holder. It doesn’t need the payment flow interrupting/intercepting and is “read only” from the card transactions list. Merchants are free to come on board as/when they want.
Email from merchant is probably not the best way though as ideally need a response saying “Cardholder not registered/Card scheme not supported” (so manual receipts can be produced) - but again, that is separate from the payment flow and each merchant can be onboarded when they update their systems (like the contactless rollout)
Actually receipts aren’t a requirement to return anything. The term is proof of purchase and that could mean a bank statement or in the case of this crazy idea a digital receipt
That’s true ^. Used to work in retail and as long as you could prove you bought it e.g. bank statement, receipt, monzo transaction, online order confirmation then you could return an item
