An Idea - Paperless Receipts

Here's an idea that I thought of a couple of months back, a couple of months back in 2006 to be less than precise... :-)

To everyone who carries a wallet, have you ever notice that after every few weeks, your wallet seems to be growing in thickness and in size? When you opened it up to inspect, you find yourself sorting out the credit card receipts, car park receipts, and all sort of other shopping receipts.

If you are anal enough, you can probably sort the receipts out chronologically and neatly arranged in piles according to your personal categories such as car petrol receipts, dining receipts, parking receipts, gadgets receipts, repair receipts, etc.

So why do we keep receipts? Why are we slave to these little pieces of thermal papers that does nothing but add dead weight to our wallets?

The answer is simple. Security. Yes, we need the security it gives us.

Each time we put a credit card receipt in our wallet we are thinking, "Phew... I am safe from credit card fraud now." Or that gadget receipt, "Now I have complete warranty!"

Personally, I seem to be emotionally attached to credit card receipts. I would keep them in my wallet for months. Then when my wallet gets too thick, I would sort and go through them one at a time and then remark to myself, "Hey, did I have a drink here? Who was there with me? Oh yeah, it was with so and so for blah blah blah..."

AIIYAH!!! I am side tracking.... I seem to have gotten lost in what I wanted to write about... LOL.

Getting back to topic, won't it be nice to have a device that is able to capture receipts paperless-ly? Example, after you purchase a book, you hand a "receipt device" to the cashier, whom via a virtual connection, download the receipt into the device.

Each time you make a purchase at any shop, you will be storing receipts (only if and when you want) in the "receipt device". And if you so desire it, you will be able to print any of the stored receipts at your own leisure, whether for tax purposes or for some verification purposes.

Further imagine that this "receipt device" happens to be your smart mobile phone. Great! No more thick and bulky wallets.

Now all I need to do is to get the cash register manufacturer to incorporate virtual receipts beaming device in their machines. A piece of cake!