Flux: The End of Paper Receipts & Loyalty Cards

What if… When you paid for something you could download your receipt so it ties in the transaction to the receipt?

The number of times I have tried to return an item and misplaced the proof of purchase!

Would also be excellent for business travel and expenses.

I’ve had Flux for ages now, and I can still only use it in one shop. Really really slow uptake (unless this is normal, i’m just looking at it as a customer).

2 Likes

I’m curious: how is flux integrating with bank apps?

I mean, does Flux have access to all your payment history or only to part of it? If so, is the data anonymized in any way?

I’m asking because the only privacy claim they make is that our data is safe from hackers (not third-parties, interestingly) and that they don’t provide personal details to merchants (I didn’t find any definition of ‘personal details’, so phone number might not be shared, but your post address and spending habits might).

Don’t get me wrong: receiving electronic receipts seems like a wonderful idea, I’m just not willing to trade my privacy for that.

3 Likes

I can’t see how it would work if they didn’t have access to your entire transaction history.

Well, it depends how they actually connect the dots in the first place (I mean what they actually use). For instance if the data they get, in addition to the receipt, is a transaction number and a bank ID, they could just access the said bank and say “I’ve got data for transaction X, interested?”… No need for them to know the details of who I am and whether I like sushis…

Anyway, after reading more I got it: they are/will be making money by selling our shopping habits or their analysis of those to merchants. E.g.

But, says [Flux], even though this is a very tentative first step, the opportunity is huge. That’s because there is a lot of valuable data locked up in receipts that can help merchants better understand who their customers are.

Again, that’s fine, that’s just not my thing and I really wished they were more transparent about it… Sorry for the noise then.

Just came to the forum to see if receipts being digitally placed into the timeline was a thing or emerging standard and I see flux. This is is a brilliant convenience and also very eco friendly. I’d love to see this technology rolled out, but I think this will have to become some kind of standard to see widespread adoption. When you buy some things in Monzo, like Ryanair for example, it places a booking reference in the transaction for you. All you would have to do is place some PDF code in here or something similar and the banking apps could pick this up and you’d be away! I realise this is a crude oversimplification of a very complex problem but it is an interesting thought.

4 Likes

Yes, I think everyone wants this, but there are a few problems:

  • Needs to be a mandated standard, so everyone gets on board
  • Needs to protect customer privacy
  • Needs to involve digital retailers like Amazon as well

Great idea, shame about the execution (and this would not be Flux’s fault at all, just the way the industry works). This might take some time to become a reality, but eventually hopefully we’ll see some form of this and you’ll be able to look at exactly what you spend money on across a whole load of products.

3 Likes

Isn’t Onedox just getting the data straight from your online accounts? Don’t see why you couldn’t do the same with Amazon, Ryanair et al.
Till receipts should be very easy to scan in…
The problem is how to make money out of it without some sort of loyalty scheme. I can’t see anyone wanting to pay for a cloud service that just gets all your receipts together, even if it was directly integrated into Monzo, for example. All the receipt apps are aimed at business

Hi all – coming back with an update here.

We can’t share full details about how we match transactions as that’s our bread and butter but there is no bank ID or transaction number from the merchant side that correlates to the bank side. So the solution suggested just can’t work. If you take a look at any paper receipt that you get – the best you can hope for in terms of identifying the bank is the BIN or first 6 digits of your card. But imagine a merchant like EAT. or itsu – and how high frequency they are especially at peak time? Those number combinations alone wouldn’t be enough to accurately match given the probabilities.

We are only able to match when we have consent to access card transaction data which customers give us explicit consent to use and our AISP licence / GDPR regulates how we process that data and to which purpose it serves.

Unfortunately the pesky paper receipt persists today because there is no magic way to connect the dots, until now.

We believe we are being fully transparent at the on-boarding of Flux to your transaction view that we will be sharing anonymised and aggregated data back to the merchant. That style of consent language is front and centre in on boarding with our fully live bank partners (Barclays Launchpad and Starling Bank) You can see screenshots of how that looks on Barclays Launchpad on our homepage in the video.

Data is sent via our real time dashboard called Blueberry – it shows things like what customer buckets, for example highly frequent customers, like to buy the most in pairings as a grouped statistic.

However we do take the feedback that this could be even more explicit on our website, including screenshots of what Blueberry might look like.

We want it to be clear and transparent that there is a value exchange here and we believe the customers using Flux see the value in paperless receipts, card linked loyalty and personalised offers that they get in this data ecosystem.

Thank you for the open questions – please keep them coming.

12 Likes

How quick is it to have the receipt appear? Only issue I can see is when I shop in Lidl, I have to scan the receipt very soon after I pay so I don’t get charged for parking.

The scanners would need to read the screen as well.

The 2018 Payments Startup of the Year award goes to ⁦‪@tryflux‬⁩ – congratulations! – sponsored by ⁦‪@ThistleGroup‬⁩ #PaymentsAwards

It would be great if you could get a scan of the receipt, or the just the items plus relevant information like transaction/till number so you could use them for returning items. I can see why shops wouldn’t like this, though. But i’d be more likely to shop somewhere which did this.

1 Like

At the moment you can take a picture of the reciept to store in the transaction feed, however if I remember correctly there is a company called Flux which could acheive what you are looking for.

Hey, hope you don’t mind but I’ve moved your post here. It’s somthing that a company called flux have been working on plus an integration with Monzo. Although I haven’t heard anything in quite some time.

2 Likes

On the banking side, Flux is currently available through Barclays (via Barclays Launchpad), challenger bank Starling, and for a small alpha group of Monzo customers.

Hopefully this means they move beyond Eat, Itsu, Pod and Pure. Just so limited at the mo

5 Likes

Indeed, I love the idea behind Flux and wish both more retailers supported it and that Monzo would finally include it as I was too late to sign up as a beta user.

I used to use Flux at Eat quite a bit when I was a Starling bank customer.

(Also Discourse for some reason REALLY doesn’t want to let me quote the last post? :man_facepalming:t2:)

4 Likes

(Related, I understand that Flux has already begun integrating with one of the major U.K. supermarkets and an “international fast food chain,” amongst other unannounced partnerships.)

Wonder who they are…?

4 Likes

Tesco and McDonald’s (I’m randomly guessing)

Hey everyone, sorry for ghosting :ghost: We’ve been wanting to get back to you when we had something more meaty to share! There’s still nothing I can share but wanted to reply to recent posts and we look forward to updating as soon as we can… :eyes:

We’re going to have to keep you guessing on those unnamed retailers for now but all shall be revealed! :wink:

Fundamentally this money is going to be put to work on expansion, to make Flux the gold standard for anything touching receipt data whether that be just the receipt for expensing / returning / budgeting or loyalty or anything else. We want to make any interaction you have with receipt data a seamless and enriched experience. This certainly means making Flux much more widely available and accessible across the UK.

Thank you again for all of your support and looking forward to an exciting 2019 :tada:

9 Likes