

Ask HN: Can we kill the receipt? - dlf

I&#x27;m getting pretty frustrated with having to track tiny pieces of paper for expense reports, and, personally, I hate that even if I tell the clerk I don&#x27;t want a receipt, it still prints off just for them to throw it away and kill some trees.<p>Is there a reason why terrible little pieces of paper with disappearing ink are still necessary to transacting business?<p>I appreciate that merchant services like Square are doing something about this. However, as a consumer, I have no control over which merchants care to implement it. Also, there has to be a better, more automatic identifier we can assign that will send a receipt without having to enter an email address every single time. What if it were possible to send a receipt automatically by scanning a QR code on the back of the credit card, or maybe in a phone app, or both? What if it were just a sticker you could attach to anything to be scanned at the register?<p>I&#x27;m sure the technical challenges (and maybe regulatory?) to solving this problem are enormous, but it&#x27;s so, so frustrating to me that I&#x27;d be willing to find out how to make it happen.
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acheron
Paper receipts are there to guard against employee theft. Your preferences
don't enter into it.

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-11/ask-the-blogger-
why...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-10-11/ask-the-blogger-why-do-
stores-give-receipts-.html)

~~~
dlf
Wouldn't an electronic receipt serve that purpose just as well?

