[ac29]

I wish we could just get rid of paper receipts by default. At the end of more or less every retail transaction, they kindly hand you a few inches (or feet) of trash, which is a waste.

Many places are kind enough to ask if you need the receipt, but it still prints out if you say no - the cashier just throws it directly away for you.

I get that some people need or want receipts for various reasons, but judging by the trash can outside many stores exits, many people don't want them. The world generates enough trash as is.

[kalleboo]

I believe that sometimes there are regulatory requirements to print receipts (as a transaction without a receipt is more likely to be cash-in-pocket tax avoidance).

My parents lived in Greece during the financial crisis, and at the time the tax agency would randomly audit people and require them to present 25% of their yearly income in the form of receipts. This was introduced as a way to get consumers to ask vendors for receipts (as a way to force them to input sales into their cash registers and book them as income)

[cyphar]

> I believe that sometimes there are regulatory requirements to print receipts (as a transaction without a receipt is more likely to be cash-in-pocket tax avoidance).

Though it is quite ironic that most original receipts don't last long enough for any audit purposes. In Australia businesses need to keep all receipts for 7 years (and for individuals it's 5 years), for tax audit purposes. But I have yet to encounter a paper receipt which lasts more than 2 years.

[kalleboo]

Yeah thermal paper is pretty terrible. Also make sure you don't forget one on the dashboard of your car on a hot sunny day... At least where I live scans of receipts are accepted so I just scan everything

[adrianN]

Since we live in the future, they could just e-mail the receipt directly to the guy who checks their tax returns.

[solatic]

For me, paper receipts are a quick and simple way to verify on-the-spot that the retailer hasn't screwed up the billing. If you're at the supermarket and everything is scanned by barcode, then everything's probably OK. If you're at a random mom-and-pop shop where product numbers and prices are entered into the POS by hand, well, cashiers are human beings, and we all make mistakes sometimes.

It would be nice if I could get an instant notification on my phone whenever my card is charged, itemizing the exact charges being added to my account, but today, that's a pipe-dream. Even then, paper receipts might be better because they keep that higher resolution of purchasing behavior private from my bank.

I'd agree that it would be a waste if I didn't get some kind of value from it. But I do. Whether society in aggregate gets enough of a benefit from it and whether more ecologically-friendly solutions are worth developing is a different question.

[Consultant32452]

Walmart pay is great about this. All of my grocery receipts are easily accessible in the app, including a picture of the product in case the description isn't clear enough.

[benjiweber]

In the UK it's common for high street shops to ask to email receipts instead of printing. Unfortunately this means giving out personal data. For those using gmail google can track all your highstreet purchase history.