Smart Receipts as an Enabler of Data Portability
Smarter shopping, and much improved empowerment of consumer rights
In the two previous posts in this series on data portability I talked about the need to think differently on the subject; and to believe that the best way to move data around is as a network rather than the legacy point-to-point model. Both of those will inevitably take time to build momentum. This last one is much more immediate. Many organisations could switch it on within weeks…., if they wanted to. So what’s the suggestion?
Receipts…., smart ones……, as the means to put the skeleton for real data portability and interoperability in place. Here’s my logic:
If the task is to move data from service providers to be under control of the people who the data belongs to, what better way to do it than at the point at which transactions and related data exchanges are already taking place.
The core data required in the vast majority of data portability scenarios is already in the scope of a standard receipt, and that itself is underpinned by significant law and regulation. Receipts cover:
What was bought
When it was bought
From whom, including contact details
how much it/ they cost (at line item level)
How much was paid in the overall transaction
How much tax was included
The payment method used
What terms and conditions covered the transaction
Let’s look at receipts in more detail.
Receipts can be traced back to 3,000 BC; their place in economies goes without question. They are records of a transaction; but as or more importantly, the point of creation for specific consumer rights around the product or service received. And yet in the digital realm their accessibility and utility has degraded beyond what we had in the analogue world. Selling organisations have regulatory obligations that mean they must issue receipts; but they have incentives to deliver to the base minimum that meets those obligations. That means increasingly low-grade paper receipts, non-machine-readable emails, or non-machine-readable PDFs.
It also means terms and conditions in tiny print, designed to not be read or understood, and certainly not challenged; and product descriptions that are often very limited. And useful analytics such as pricing are impossible.
Receipts exist in B2C and B2B contexts, and across all industries and all geographies. In numeric terms there should be some 63m retail receipts produced per day in the UK, and that number increases with transactions not seen as retail, e.g. financial investments, buying property and similar.
As in the two prior posts, my contention is that when one considers the option to have strong data management and use capabilities running for an individual on a fiduciary basis, then many new empowering scenarios become possible. The visual below shows a very simple ‘buyers agent’ scenario that begins with the ingest and augmentation of receipts. In this one, the use case is ‘ensure that I shop around for those grocery items that I buy regularly and which are much the same across the range of retailers’.
Obviously there are many other use cases that derive from having good quality data on the things a person buys, or may buy, moved under their control; and them having the ability to have agents and apps use that data on the person’s behalf.
This ‘auto-comparison' shopping model can easily apply across many types of products and services - white goods, clothing, financial products, travel, technology…; anything where research and decision-making in the digital realm is required. And then other scenarios such as ‘remind me’ of subscriptions and renewal dates, finding warranties and guarantees when things break or don’t work as they should.
Sound weird? Yes it does. But much of what Generative AI can and will enable currently sounds weird; but be assured it is very real. Walmart have already announced their assumption that they must plan for and enable customer’s having their own agents. And that model will evolve further over time, with tools like ‘auto-buy’; Mastercard and Visa and others have announced that your agents will soon (safely) have their own credit cards.
The kickstarter is obviously ‘how do we go from receipts delivered in current paper, email, PDF or portal download formats’ to ‘receipts easily ingested into personal tools on the side of the customer’. I think that is straightforward enough - as and when organisations recognise or are made to recognise that smart, digital receipts are a valid part of data portability. The obvious methods are:
Deliver via loyalty programmes where they are in place (they typically have line item data in augmented form, and a My Account function where receipt delivery can be enacted.
Deliver via email, a JSON or JSON-LD format would suffice
Present a customer-side ‘send here’ QR code or similar to the scanner connected to an EPOS system
Scan a paper receipt, ingest and augment as in the above visual
What are the barriers to this happening? Certainly no technical ones. But it certainly interferes with the current data capture model in many retailers, explained brilliantly by Daniel Levy in this post.
I think what will tip the balance in favour of smart, digital receipts emerging fast will be the much improved customer experience they can deliver. And then ultimately the model will bring greater trust in e-commerce than is justifiable at present.
So there we have it, data portability would appear to be much easier than some would have you believe.