What is electronic receipt that accelerates retail business management? Its reality and benefits

What is an electronic receipt?

An electronic receipt is literally a digital version of a paper receipt. There is a function where the information when you shop becomes data, and you receive it on an app on your smartphone or other device after paying the bill. In recent years, the public and private sectors have been working together to promote the spread of electronic receipts, and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s standardization experiment conducted in 2018 was widely reported in news articles in the Nikkei Shimbun.

By the way, why are electronic receipts attracting so much attention, and why are there active efforts to popularize them, involving not only companies but also the government? This is because if electronic receipts become widespread, there will be significant benefits for both the seller who issues the receipt and the consumer who receives the receipt.

The paper receipts you normally receive at checkout often end up in the garbage. However, if you digitize this, you can add a lot of value to it, unlike paper that just ends up in the trash. First of all, when you buy something online, you are not issued a paper receipt. Now that online shopping is becoming more widespread and cashless payments are increasing in general stores, both sellers and consumers are becoming less negative towards digital.

Electronic receipts are a very simple system that reads a barcode when shopping and issues a receipt to the customer’s smartphone app. However, there are many budding business opportunities there.

Advantages of electronic receipts

When it comes to the benefits of electronic receipts, consumers and sellers have different perspectives. Here we will explain the advantages of each.

Benefits of electronic receipts for consumers

The biggest benefit consumers will see is the elimination of wasteful paper receipts. The inside of your wallet will be tidy and won’t be bulky. If you receive paper receipts, you will need to organize them regularly.

All information is stored within the app, so you can check it at any time. You can see what you bought with your credit card, and you don’t have to panic when you realize you’ve lost a receipt when you try to record your household finances. In the first place, paper receipts will not be reflected in the household account book unless someone inputs them. However, if you get the data into your smartphone, you can link it to your household account book app from there. Additionally, when returning items, you will be asked for the receipt from the time of purchase, but this will give you peace of mind and will reduce the amount of time you have to wait to print out a receipt at checkout.

You can see that there are many benefits from this alone, but there are other benefits of digitization as well. For example, you can display information on campaigns run by stores or manufacturers on your receipt, and apply from there. Applying for campaigns that previously required a lot of effort such as reading the barcode attached to the target product, entering the serial code, and collecting stickers can now be easily done from the receipt. Masu.

Similarly, you can also use the coupon function to get great deals. Up until now, it has been possible to obtain coupons on SNS, news apps, store apps, LINE, etc., but it would be more convenient to have everything consolidated into an electronic receipt. Of course, you can also use it as a point card to collect store stamps.

Benefits of electronic receipts for retailers

Now let’s look at the benefits for retailers. “Eliminating paper” is also meaningful for sellers. To output paper receipts, you will need a special machine (register) and paper. The amount of paper used for receipts in Japan each year reaches approximately 54,000 tons. This is equivalent to 13.5 billion sheets of A4 copy paper. If it were actually used as receipt paper, it would be long enough to circle the earth 378 times. The cost involved is also enormous, at 96 billion yen. Of course, if the printing part of the cash register breaks down, there will be a repair fee. Implementing electronic receipts can reduce these costs.

It’s not just expenses that can be reduced. When the paper runs out, you have to manually replace it, which takes extra time. Labor costs are high, and customers are forced to wait at the register, causing inconvenience. In comparison, electronic receipts save time when checking out, which helps avoid crowding at cash registers and reduces labor costs.

The benefit for retailers is that they can take measures to increase sales beyond reducing costs. This is inextricably linked to the benefits for consumers, but by using campaigns, coupons, and stamp card functions, you can easily take measures to increase customers and sales. Furthermore, since the information is targeted at people who have visited the store and purchased the product, rather than spreading it out blindly through advertisements, it can be assumed that the response rate will be high.

By linking actually accumulated purchasing data with customers, more effective marketing activities are possible. Until now, this approach required companies with large amounts of capital to build their own systems, but electronic receipts could be used at low rates, or even free of charge, just like cashless payments. This is a huge opportunity for small and medium-sized retailers.

Disadvantages of electronic receipts

However, the widespread use of electronic receipts also comes with disadvantages. Here, we will explain the disadvantages of the widespread use of electronic receipts, separately for consumers and sellers.

Disadvantages of electronic receipts for consumers

First, let’s consider the disadvantages of electronic receipts from the consumer’s perspective. The biggest concern is security. When using electronic receipts, information about the items you purchased, their prices, stores, and times are transmitted over the network. If that information is leaked to a third party, your personal information about where and what you bought will be stolen.

Another advantage of electronic receipts is that you can easily view such information using a smartphone app, but like any other app, there is a risk that your smartphone could be seen by someone close to you, such as a family member or friend. This is not illegal hacking, but rather something everyone should be careful about. In order to popularize electronic receipts, it is necessary to consider these security issues.

Disadvantages of electronic receipts for retailers

Finally, let’s discuss the disadvantages of retailers. To issue electronic receipts, retailers must purchase a cash register that supports electronic receipts. This is because it needs to be connected to the internet in order to send data to the customer’s smartphone. This can be especially burdensome, especially if the store is using a cash register that was just purchased in response to the tax increase.

In this regard, cashless payments, which became popular earlier due to digitalization, may be helpful. In order to increase the speed of dissemination, it is possible to reduce the unit price by offering parts that are originally costly for free or at a discount, and by increasing the number of products. Also, since the government is putting so much effort into this, we may be able to expect subsidies from the government.

Electronic receipt experiment example

At the beginning, I explained that the government is actively introducing electronic receipts, but let me introduce some examples of experiments that have actually been carried out. Introduction experiments began in earnest in 2018, but the ones that attracted particular attention were the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s introduction experiment in Machida City in February, and the one conducted by Toshiba Tec Corporation in September. This is an introduction project in Okinawa. These experiments investigated questions such as “what kind of behavior would consumers take if they were actually issued with an electronic receipt?” and “how effectively could user data be used?”

Introduction experiment in Machida City

From February 13th to February 28th, 2018, an introduction experiment was conducted in Machida City, Tokyo by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry and Toshiba Tec Corporation. In this experiment, electronic receipts were issued at 27 stores in the city, including supermarkets, Ministop, and Tokyu Hands, and the trial operation was conducted with the cooperation of approximately 2,700 people during the period.

The reason this experiment attracted so much attention is that after it was completed, a standard format for electronic receipts was created. By conforming to this format in the future, electronic receipts and receipt apps will be able to be used in common even if the manufacturer or store is different.

In addition to checking whether there were any technical issues, it was also tested whether the stores could use the acquired data to conduct effective promotional activities. There were also many participating companies, including Fujitsu, NTT Data CS , LINE, and DNP, and experiments were conducted to see if they could be used interchangeably. As a result, in a post-experiment survey, just under 80% of people answered that they would like to continue receiving electronic receipts, and just under 70% said that they would like to shop at stores that use the standard format.

Introduction projects carried out throughout Okinawa

Also in 2018, an introduction project that attracted attention began in Okinawa. While Machida’s experiment lasted two weeks, this project lasted for about six months, from September 12th to March 11th of the following year, 2019. The number of participants was expected to be 30,000, more than 10 times that of Machida, making it one of the largest implementation experiments ever.

Toshiba Tec Corporation, which played a central role in the Machida experiment, collaborated with companies in Okinawa Prefecture to carry out the project at 47 stores throughout the prefecture. The project was named “Project to improve the convenience of Okinawan housewives’ lives using electronic receipts.” Receipts conform to established standard formats, and in addition to regular sales, a variety of campaigns have been implemented, including events to attract customers and mutual customer referrals between stores.

summary

Electronic receipts are a new technology that has only just been tested, but as mentioned above, the standards have already been standardized and there are almost no technical barriers. In the future, as cashless payments progress and the digitalization of cash registers progresses, it is expected that the number of stores and users will increase significantly. Please continue to carefully monitor trends.