E-Receipt

E-receipt is a solution designed to completely digitalize paper receipts, adn we want to achieve this by creating a new payment terminal, that upon a transaction made with NFC or a credit card, would instantly send the data from the bill to the user’s phone. The data would be then stored in a mobile application where the user could get access to all the receipts he got from all the transactions he had made

Franciszek Golebiowski
Tilburg Univeristy
Entrepreneurship & Business Innovation

Over het initiatief / About the initiative

E-Receipt

In welke fase zit jouw initiatief? / In what stage is your initiative?

Ideefase

Heb je jouw initiatief al gevalideerd? / Did you validate your initiative?

We are currently in the validation phase, and already got feedback from around 150 potential users. We still need more validation from business owners.

Meer informatie over jouw initiatief / More info about your initiative

We live in times of frighteningly progressing climate change, and that is a fact, proven by different studies, and scientists. It is slowly starting to affect us more and more, starting with hotter seasons, rising prices of fruits and vegetables, higher air pollution, an enormous waste of different resources, and many more. The problem of waste is very complex, composed of many factors, including quite small ones we don’t think about on a daily basis – such as paper receipts. We encounter them
practically every day, and mostly throw them away, contributing to the waste of paper and ink, and they are also toxic. “Each year in the U.S., up to 10 million trees are used to make the paper, and 21 billion gallons of water are used; skipping receipts would save 12 billion pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2), the equivalent of one million cars on the road”. The Ecology Center estimates that 93 percent of paper receipts are coated with Bisphenol-A (BPA) or Bisphenol-S (BPS), “and when we touch receipts, the chemical coating is absorbed into our bodies through our hands in mere seconds. BPA impacts fetal development and is linked to reproductive impairment, type 2 diabetes, thyroid conditions, and other health concerns”. This has to be changed in a progressive, eco-conscious society – and we think that we might have a solution. Our solution is very simple. We want to create a new payment system with a terminal, that upon a transaction made with a card or a phone would send information about the transaction itself, so date, price etc. and additionally the contents of the receipt to the buyers bank. Once the digital receipt is in the banks database, the user has full access to every receipt he got while buying. For the business owners, the digital receipt is going to be sent to the designated E-Receipt app for business owners. Which is going to allow the business owners to store and track all of their sales, intuitively in one place, with a clear graphical interface.
Employers need to keep all receipts in their administration. You are allowed to scan and digitally store receipts, but there are a few requirements that you need to take into account. The receipts must be a correct and complete reproduction of the original. The authenticity features must be stored as well. If you meet the requirements, you do not need to keep the original paper receipts.

The digital receipts need to be stored for 7 years and must be verifiable within a reasonable period. Electronic services, telecommunication services and radio and television broadcasting services are an exception. In this case, you need to keep the digital receipts for 10 years.

Wat is er anders/nieuw aan jouw idee/oplossing t.o.v. bestaande oplossingen? / What is different/new about your idea/solution compared to existing solutions??

There are some digital receipt solutions that exist on the market already, however we didn’t yet find anything that would look the same as E-Receipt. The current solutions mostly involve scanning the printed receipt that is then stored on your phone, or scanning a QR code next to the terminal, that sends you a receipt by email, SMS or opens it in your browser. We want to remove the need of doing something manually – with our solution you just pay and get it instantly on your smartphone. Sending a SMS or email also has an environmental impact – the use of energy to do that creates CO2 emissions – if it’s got one image or an attachment (50g CO2e).

Wat zijn jouw volgende stappen om het verder te ontwikkelen? / What are your next steps to develop the initiative?

The next step would be finalizing our problem validation – even though we got huge feedback from potential users, their demographic is still limited to mostly students, and we need more information from other age groups. We also have to conduct broad market research, interviewing various business owners working in different fields. We are working closely with a business developer that is providing us with constant help and advice. 

We hope to positively validate the problem, try to finalize our initial idea for the solution, and then expand the market research and start building an MVP. 

Wat heb je nodig om (nog meer) impact te maken met dit initiatief? / What do you need to make (more) impact with this initiative?

To make the most impact with our initiative, cooperation with the government of The Netherlands or the European Union would be needed. With legislative help, it would be way easier to introduce E-Receipt on a bigger scale quickly.