Was thinking earlier, as I was sifting through the accumulated receipts in my wallet, that there has to be a better way to do this. We’ve managed to make lots of things digital already… so this can’t be too difficult. I’d imagine there may be practical and legal reasons why people currently have paper receipts however it’s possible to change habits.
Here’s a possible scenario. You go to insert large supermarket here and at the checkout when you buy your goods you swipe your loyalty card. This then automatically saves your purchase, emails it to you (if specified) and loads it into your account online where you can later view it and print it off. If you specifically ask the cashier for a receipt they can still provide it.
Now this solution is specific to one chain of shops and doesn’t solve the larger problem. What would be neater still would be for banks to allow you to store the receipt through using their card for the purchase. Alternatively you have a ‘receipt card’ (who needs more cards? =S) that you swipe and it saves it there. These solutions would mean all your receipts at all shops would be saved online for later viewing.
The implementation may be different but I’m sure this will take place in the future.