Receipts are going digital. Great. Now I can lose them electronically instead of accidentally throwing them into a physical trash bin. But seriously folks…
The upside? No more wasting paper (which not only makes the ‘green’ folks happy, but also lowers costs), ease of organization, tracking, recall and portability. The longer the item is warranted, the more useful this is, of course (unless you enjoy digging up that receipt nine-years after a device warranted for ten-years goes on the fritz). And has anyone noticed that when they go back through those older heat-created receipts, some of them have faded to the point of being completely unreadable?
The downside? Privacy. In order to get the receipt, the sender needs your information such as an e-mail address (although there are ways around that, if you wish, but some of them are clunky). One way to retain privacy would be for the retailer to project your receipt on a screen as a Bar or Q-code. Then you could scan it onto your PDA with the appropriate app.
Just spit-ballin’ here, but eventually, this will be the standard way of doing things.